Helping Hands

Now, being a newcomer to all this malarkey, I'm not sure what sort of reaction I'll get to this. I did try it out with British Airways in their planning of terminal 5 at Heathrow (that's London, England) but those giys just don't have any imagination. So...

Imagine the scene, you arrive fully laden at the terminal building, struggle to find a trolley with a non-sentient wheel, weave you way to check-in, drop your bags, out falls your stash, get embarrassed, re-pack. The airline then has to look after your bags for a couple of hours and who knows what happens to them. I shudder to think of the security risk. So...

You arrive at the terminal to be met by your helping hand, which literally picks up your bags for you. These hands (more correctly arms) are bio-engineered human style arms which are suspended from a grid on the ceiling. Once they have your luggage, they whisk it away for a quick security check (no problem because there's lots of hands to help) and then your luggage returns to you and follows you as you wander aimlessly around the airport. With a bit of genetic tinkering and a modest amount of programming the hands could also act as guides, pointing the way to the toilets etc. As the whole ceiling is covered you can literally go anyewhere with your luggage being passed from hand to hand. When you're called for your flight the luggage follows you onto the flight, only being diverted into the hold as you board the plane. The advantages of this are numerous. No pilfering by baggae handlers; no baggage handling strikes, no lost luggage, no 'we can't fly until the person who hasn't boarded the plane bags have been unloaded'....

With a modicum of tinkering the hands could help in lots of other situations...