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SmartGate

Inspiration

We love building software that removes friction from real work. As a CS student and robotics mentor who’s obsessed with operations and aviation, we kept seeing the same gaps in galley workflows: inconsistent bottle decisions, packing errors discovered too late, and new hires overwhelmed by tribal knowledge. SmartGate was born to make those decisions simple, auditable, and fast using only the phones and tablets teams already have.

What We Built

SmartGate is an all-in-one app for galley operations:

Role-aware login shows ground operators or flight attendants only what they need.
QR bottle logging tracks pours in flight and applies airline rules on return to keep, combine, or discard.
Vision-guided packing and quick barcode sweeps direct the right item to the right slot in the right order using flight data like aircraft type and load factor.
Seal gate requires a final photo check and reconciliation before release.
Gamified training mirrors real tasks with short levels, instant feedback, and a friendly leaderboard.

How We Built It

Frontend: Streamlit minimalistic frontend.
Backend: Simple API and rules engine; event logs create a photo-backed audit trail.
CV: OpenCV for top-down photo checks and multi-barcode capture; human-in-the-loop confirmations on low confidence.
Data: A clean schema for flights, SKUs, airline rules, bottle lifecycle, pack plans, and audits.

What We Learned

Design for frontline speed first, then add intelligence.
Human-in-the-loop beats brittle automation under time pressure.
Small rules engines with clear data models outperform ad-hoc checklists.
Photo evidence turns debates into decisions.

Challenges

No scale sensors: built a software-only approach that still produces trustable outcomes.
CV under variable lighting: added guided framing, confidence scores, and fallbacks.
Sparse real data: seeded simulated flights and SKUs and tuned thresholds iteratively.
Timeboxed hackathon: prioritized MVP flows and deferred nice-to-haves.

Impact

Fewer packing mistakes, less beverage waste, faster onboarding, and clear accountability delivered as a single, approachable app from SummitLogic.

What’s Next

Pilot with real flights Run a two-week ground and in-flight pilot on one narrow-body route. Capture baseline KPIs for error rate, waste, seal rework, and onboarding time.
Deeper data integrations Ingest live flight loads and tail assignments. Import airline bottle policies and SKU catalogs. Expose an API for catering ERPs to push BOMs and pull audits.
Smarter bottle decisions Add on-device fill-level estimation from photos, confidence scoring, and assisted “best pair” suggestions for combine actions.
Stronger governance Harden role rules, approvals for discards and combines, and immutable audit bundles with signed timestamps and operator IDs.
Offline and reliability Background sync, conflict resolution, and resilient queues for low-connectivity ramps. Add health pings and crash recovery.
Training content at scale Build micro-lessons tied to the live workflows. Auto-assign refreshers after repeated mistakes. Track skill progression per user.
Multilingual and accessibility Spanish and English first, with large touch targets, voice prompts, and color-safe cues.
Dashboards and alerts Real-time views for supervisors, exception queues, and scheduled reports to quantify savings and compliance.
Security and privacy Least-privilege defaults, media redaction, encryption in transit and at rest, and periodic access reviews.
Path to production Mobile device management rollout, CI/CD, and a staged launch across additional fleets and stations.