Zing positioned the eGSE around removing human drivers from the tarmac, where ground handling labor is the largest controllable cost for airlines and a source of damage, injuries and delays. The company argued that autonomous ground service equipment could cut hourly operating costs while improving ramp safety and security.
Its software-defined approach let a single programmable vehicle cover missions that would otherwise require multiple vehicle types, backed by a machine vision sensor suite and a fail-safe compute architecture.
Autonomous ground support equipment addresses labor cost, ramp safety and turnaround reliability in airport ground handling, the market Zing targeted with electric autonomous vehicles for airlines and cargo carriers.
The field has consolidated around players including Aurrigo's Auto-DollyTug, TLD's TractEasy and EZTow, AeroVect's self-driving GSE platform, ThorDrive and Azalea Robotics, several of them now held by larger aviation equipment groups.
