Boston Logan: practical AI at the bin and the information point
A recycling assistant is in daily use at three terminal locations. A newer multilingual avatar is being piloted to help passengers find their way. Both can be judged by whether their advice works, rather than how novel the interface looks.
Aerial view of Boston Logan International Airport from a departing aircraft, April 2025. Photograph: 4300streetcar / CC BY 4.0 (cropped to fit). Shows the airport, not an AI implementation.
The picture at Boston Logan
Two tasks with little room for theatre
Airports generate small, repetitive decisions on a large scale. A passenger has to decide where an item belongs after eating; another needs to locate a gate or find out how to reach a connection. Boston Logan has used AI at both points, although the evidence of maturity differs.
Massport lists three Oscar Sort units on its recycling information page, at gates B25, C24 and E2. The system uses image recognition to guide waste sorting. In September 2026, an Amelia avatar concierge was introduced as a trial for airport directions and other passenger information.
The distinction is between an installed, narrowly defined tool and a new service still being tested. Vendor excitement about a holographic interface is not evidence that travellers receive better guidance.
Selected implementations
Does the answer lead to the right action?
01 / Deployed
Which bin should this go into?
The operational problem
Recycling stations often ask passengers to distinguish materials while rushing between flights. Contamination can undermine collection efforts.
What the sources report
Massport's sustainability page confirms three Oscar Sort recycling assistants at Logan. Airports International described Intuitive AI's image-recognition system operating in high-traffic parts of three terminals in February 2025.
Why it matters
The question is concrete: does the machine direct a passenger to the correct waste stream, and does that change contamination rates?
What remains unproven
The available airport evidence identifies locations, not an independently measured improvement in recycling performance.
Passengers need directions and up-to-date information, sometimes in a language they are more comfortable using than English.
What the sources report
A September 2026 announcement described Massport's pilot of Amelia, an AI avatar created with Proto Hologram and Holomedia AI. The providers say it offers guidance in up to 40 languages, with mapping and the option to reach a live person.
Why it matters
A multilingual information service could reduce routine enquiries if it provides accurate directions and escalates more complex requests reliably.
What remains unproven
Pilot location coverage, accuracy, escalation rates and traveller satisfaction have not been established through an independent evaluation.
Evidence supports a reported claim; it does not automatically establish a measured operating benefit.
The wider register
What else is happening at Boston Logan?
These are Logan's two current featured AI cases. Future source updates should distinguish the installed recycling units from the still-evolving concierge pilot.
No additional publicly listed deployment records.
An ordinary task is a fair test
Neither application needs an airport-wide transformation claim. A correctly sorted item and a traveller who reaches the right place are tangible outcomes.
For Boston, published performance measurements would be more informative than another description of how the systems look.
Live data from the Aerostack register. Status reflects published evidence only. See Our approach for how records are graded.
Aerostack register · 2 tracked deployments
Aerostack tracks AI deployments across airports and airlines, with the published evidence behind each record. Photography is real aviation imagery. Record thumbnails may show the named airport or airline; other photographs do not.
