How spotting pigeons on the runway helped an AI revolution at UniSuper

Investment Magazine

Figuring out whether an image displayed on a computer monitor is a piece of aircraft debris or a pigeon – or, say, a ferret – on an airport runway is unlikely inspiration for the application of AI to super fund operations. But a presentation by Changi Airport at a conference in Singapore last year revealed the potential of AI to drive radical transformation of how a fund keeps critical information up to date.  UniSuper head of digital and customer experience Brendan Donoghue, who was at the Singapore conference, says a presentation outlined how Changi Airport processes about a thousand flights a day, and used to employ people to watch screens to detect runway debris. It was a mundane job, but a bad call could have catastrophic consequences. 

“If you have something suck up into a jet engine, two things happen,” Donoghue says. “Number one, your passengers are suddenly at very high risk of an accident. And number two, the runway gets shut down. “All these people used to sit at their computer screens, and they would scan their monitors, and look for something and then try to guess is it a pigeon; is it a piece of tire that’s fallen off; or is it just a reflection in the light bouncing off the camera? And they’d send teams out to go and clean the runway.” 

The rest of this article can be found at investmentmagazine.com.au.