Acceleration programme of the Fiumicino Innovation Hub has come to an end

At the Terminal 1 of “Leonardo da Vinci” airport, the second Runway to the Future Acceleration Programme for start ups has been completed. CREDIT: Aeroporti di Roma.

At the Terminal 1 of “Leonardo da Vinci” airport, the second Runway to the Future Acceleration Programme for start ups with the “Results Day” event held at the Innovation Hub of Aeroporti di Roma. The event was attended by the 12 start ups selected from the 116 applicants to the second “Call4Ideas”.

The innovative projects, focused on the airport sector and many of which based on Artificial Intelligence solutions, have “landed” at Fiumicino airport from all over the world: Aeroficial Intelligence (Austria), Argos AI (Turkey), Auxilia (France), DesignHubz (UAE), Essential Aero (USA), Guimu Robot (China), Hamsa ID (Netherlands), Matroid (USA), Proteso (Italy), ReLearn (Italy), Wintics (France) , ZestIOT (India).

The programmes journey 

The ADR’s Innovation Cabin Crew (ICC) team explained the journey made over the past six months by the start-ups in the eight macro-areas to the programme’s partners: Autogrill, Aws, Enav, Eurocontrol and Terna listened as : Predictive Maintainance, Enhance Terminal Processes, Improve Airside Operations (improving aircraft turnaround), Environmental Impact (reducing environmental impact and energy consumption), Community & Sustainability (creation of value for the local community), Passenger Experience (improving quality for passengers), Commercial Opportunities (increasing sales opportunities), and Disruptive Solutions (that can be applied to our airport smart city).

During the programme, the selected start-ups had the opportunity to work at and develop their projects within the airport with the support of ADR’s innovation team and ICC’s Business Mentor.

At the end of the programme, an evaluation phase will begin for potential investment by ADR Ventures, the Corporate Venture Capital fund launched in February 2023 and fully owned and supported by ADR itself. The fund already has a portfolio of two start ups: Ottonomy, a start up with autonomous robots capable of making contactless deliveries in both indoor and outdoor environments, and ASSAIA, which has developed software combining artificial intelligence and computer vision to provide airports and airlines with complete visibility of airport turnaround operations, enabling to predict problems and automate processes to make them more efficient.

“We are thrilled with the success of the second <<Runway to the Future>> programme. After the first programme that saw 50% of the projects brought into operation in the complex airport machine, the collaboration with start-ups and partners of excellence has allowed us to identify further innovative solutions that will contribute to improve our airport performances, which is increasingly sustainable and passenger-oriented,” said the ADR Innovation & Quality Vice President, Emanuele Calà. “The success of the Runway to the Future programme confirms ADR’s commitment to the development of a state-of-the-art airport, capable of responding to the needs of a continuously evolving industry. For this purpose ADR set up a Corporate Venture Capital company (ADR Ventures) in 2023 to support the growth of the most promising start-ups and accelerate the implementation of innovative solutions. Today’s Results Day was a unique opportunity to share the progress made with industry stakeholders and create the conditions to further develop concrete and business-driven innovation that can make available to our passengers the advantages of the airport of the future ”.

The Aeroporti di Roma Innovation Hub is supported by the holding Company Mundys, as well as by some representatives of “Airports for Innovation” network (as AENA and Nice Cote d’Azur Airport). At the end of the event, it was announced the closure of the 3^rd Global Call4Startups that it will be on March 22nd.