The hour of service robots at the airport

Author: Francisco Javier Martin Romo

Date Published: August 11, 2025

The arrival of service robotics in airports is no longer a hypothesis but a fact. And if there is a setting where their deployment is particularly compelling, it is the airport terminal: high-density public spaces where hospitality, security, logistics, cleaning and passenger assistance converge. In these environments, robots are ceasing to be future-tech curiosities and are becoming part of day-to-day operations, visible to travellers and measurable by operators.

Earlier this year, I had the privilege of participating in ForsaTEK 2025, the Emirates Group’s annual innovation forum in Dubai. Beyond the slick organisation, the event felt like a barometer of global aviation tech. Robotics was everywhere: patrol units, indoor and outdoor delivery platforms, robotic arms, and even a handful of humanoids, sitting alongside AI and analytics solutions. The signal is clear: robotics is moving from accessory to roadmap, evaluated on operational performance, scalability and return on investment.

Where it already works—and in plain sight

The most persuasive evidence is found where passengers can see it. In Munich, the JEEVES snack-and-drink robot now trundles through Terminal 2 gate areas, selling via a touchscreen and cashless payment. What began as a trial in 2024 has become a regular feature of the airport’s “digital services”, used to test acceptance, integrate payments and—crucially—codify “rules of co-existence” between machines and people in busy concourses.

In Frankfurt, the story is cleaning. Fraport Facility Services introduced autonomous scrubbers in Terminal 1 in 2024, documenting the contribution with the kind of proof-of-work data that facility contracts demand: routes, schedules and digital activity logs. This is the first visible wave of robotics on terminal floors: off-peak shifts, well-mapped routes and auditable results. 

Heathrow has leaned into scale. Working with Mitie, the airport has deployed dozens of Gausium units (Scrubber 50 and 75 families) and published training and ROI narratives, including a dedicated Cleaning Centre of Excellence on site. Talking about a fleet rather than “a robot” implies orchestration, uptime engineering and comparable KPIs, not one-off pilots. 

Adoption isn’t confined to Western Europe. In Amman, Queen Alia International Airport introduced four autonomous cleaning robots in public areas to tackle peaks and improve consistency, a signal that Middle Eastern hubs are also moving from demo to deployment in soft services. 

Spain moves

A tourism heavyweight cannot lag the airport innovation race. At Barcelona El Prat (T1), the Sala VIP Joan Miró operates a multi-robot service to relieve floor staff, supporting delivery, bussing and other repetitive tasks in a premium, front-of-house setting with flows exceeding two thousand guests a day.

The same terminal inaugurated SELF by Áreas next to Gate B24: a robotic, self-service F&B outlet with an industrial arm, ordering kiosks and 24/7 operation. It is not a mobile robot roaming the concourse; it is visible automation serving the same objective, more service with less friction. 

In Madrid Barajas, autonomous floor scrubbers (Gausium Scrubber-50 class) are already working in public areas, an observation I can attest to first-hand in recent weeks.

What to expect in the next 12–24 months

Cleaning will lead. Expect broader adoption of autonomous scrubbers because they free human teams for higher-complexity tasks and produce audit trails that operations and procurement teams can live with. Heathrow’s numbers and training model will be studied and emulated. 

Information robots will get (much) better. The convergence of mobile platforms with large language models should be a catalyst for conversational wayfinding and assistance robots able to understand complex queries, switch language seamlessly and give contextual directions. Early “concierge” deployments in airports and the broader wave of airline/airport chatbots point to a wave of LLM-powered pilots on the concourse.

Security goes beyond the terminal. Expect guarded, off-peak patrols of perimeter areas—thermal cameras, analytics for fencing and intrusion detection—integrated with existing SOC workflows. Early EMEA tests (e.g., uRun at Mönchengladbach, GR100 at Bordeaux) indicate that success will hinge less on the novelty of the robot and more on integration with response playbooks, privacy rules and “human-in-the-loop” oversight. 

Hospitality splits in two. On the floor, runner robots will take segments of service in lounges and food courts; behind the scenes, intralogistics automation will scale steadily, where it fits existing corridors, lifts and BOH workflows.

Assisted mobility gains momentum. Autonomous wheelchairs under a “self-service” model, complementing traditional assistance, are moving from US trials (MIA, DTW, BWI) toward EMEA interest, because they improve inclusion while smoothing connection times and staffing constraints.

Baggage transport in public areas will be selective. Expect short-haul, pedestrian-speed pilots (and more robust tests in landside zones), but widespread adoption will depend on insurance, ODD definitions and comparative ROI versus smart trolleys or human valet models. Dublin’s current trial shows both the appetite and the caution. Meanwhile, “last-metre” retail delivery—small-form runs to gates—will keep growing because it already fits space, payments and passenger expectations. 

Why now, and what ISO 4448 can change

Three forces are pushing in the same direction. 

• Efficiency: labour shortages and cost pressure. 

• Experience: more consistent service, tighter cycle times and on-demand responsiveness. 

• Data: journey and activity records that enable auditing, optimisation and scale.

For airport managers, this is not about “buying a robot”; it is about integrating a service—time windows, no-go zones, remote supervision, maintenance, cybersecurity and measured impact.

The next step, already visible in innovation committees, is to move from single-use pilots to robot traffic: multiple device types, multiple vendors and an orchestration layer that coexists with operations, security and passenger services. That is where international standards matter. The ISO 4448 series on public-area mobile robots (PMRs) provides shared language and practices for behaviours on pedestrian routes, curb-side loading, suitability of pathways, safe fallbacks and traceability (including the “journey data recorder”), especially important once services scale beyond a trial. 

What is novel here, compared with industrial robotics, is the operating theatre: public spaces and untrained bystanders. Passengers have not “opted in” to interact with a robot; front-line staff are not roboticists; and environments are messy, dynamic and changeable. The burden for safety sits with the machine and its operator: navigate density, yield, and communicate intent (stopping, turning, waiting) in ways people can grasp. A coherent standards framework is not bureaucracy; it is the bridge between today’s isolated deployments and tomorrow’s mixed fleets. 

One last note on credibility

Airports are a proving ground because they are complex, regulated and value predictability. The deployments above are not “exotic” or confined to Asia; they are in America, Europe and the Middle East, visible to passengers and measurable by operators.

Munich’s roaming snackbot, Frankfurt’s logged scrubber routes, Heathrow’s scaled fleet and Amman’s public-area robots are part of the same pattern. Barcelona and Madrid add Spain to the map with visible automation in a premium lounge, a robotic F&B outlet on the concourse, and autonomous scrubbers on the terminal floor.

The industry has moved past the “innovator” phase and is deep into early adoption, on quality as much as quantity. The question for the next two years is not if the robots are coming. It is how we manage the traffic.

If this blog post has piqued your curiosity, please consider joining URF as a member or sponsor. Contact francisco@urbanroboticsfoundation.org or fill in the contact us form on our website.