Changi Rolls Out Autonomous Wheelchairs for Transit Passengers
Source: CNA Tech
Changi Airport has deployed autonomous wheelchairs in the transit areas of Terminals 2 and 3, letting passengers with reduced mobility move between gates independently. Nine chairs per terminal follow predefined routes monitored by SATS staff, following trials involving more than 13,000 passengers and 2,300 daily wheelchair requests.
Changi Airport is handing some of its most labour-intensive work to robots. The airport and ground handling partner SATS have deployed autonomous wheelchairs in the transit areas of Terminals 2 and 3, letting passengers with reduced mobility move between gates on their own instead of waiting for one-to-one staff assistance.
The first phase is deliberately cautious: nine wheelchairs in each terminal, moving along predefined routes under the watch of a SATS supervisor at a control centre. The chairs cap out at 3.5kmh, slow down in shopping areas, play music to alert nearby pedestrians and stop automatically when their path is blocked. Safety features include seatbelt monitoring, an emergency stop button, an assistance call function and swappable batteries good for about seven hours of operation.
The rollout follows an extended trial period — 10 autonomous wheelchairs tested from March 2025 to June this year, with more than 13,000 passengers taking part on routes between boarding gates, waiting areas and gate-to-gate transfers. Demand is the reason for the urgency: airlines at Changi handle around 2,300 wheelchair assistance requests every day, four in five from transfer passengers, and requests grew 20% between 2023 and 2025. With Singapore's population ageing and air travel climbing, that number is only heading one way.
Changi is not the first airport to try this — the team studied how other hubs run autonomous wheelchairs before committing — but the phased, supervisor-monitored approach shows how seriously it treats passenger safety. SATS vice-president Edwin Tan says 18 chairs is a "comfortable number" for now, with more possible as the airport learns.
Why it matters for Singapore: This is Singapore's automation strategy in miniature: a labour-constrained economy, a world-class logistics operator, and a willingness to let AI-driven machines handle routine physical work while humans move to higher-touch tasks. Changi has long been the country's showpiece for operational excellence, and its success with autonomous passenger assistance will shape how quickly other Singapore institutions — hospitals, MRT operators, nursing homes — trust robots in shared public spaces. The airport is, effectively, running the national pilot for physical AI.
