It's all about identity
It's expected that there will be nearly 4 billion air passengers in 2018. This number is set to double over the next twenty years. These are huge numbers for airports and current transport infrastructure to deal with. So those in tourism and aviation need to come up with smarter, faster processes. Essentially, we need to speed up the little things.
Go to any airport in the world and you will see queues. At check-in, at the departure gate, at immigration. All of these queues are necessary because staff are required for safety and security reasons to ensure that passengers are on the right flights. They need to make sure nobody is getting access to an area or flight that they shouldn't.
But if we break it down further, what's really happening is the verification of identity. These checks are to make sure that every traveller is who they say they are. Although extremely difficult to forge, it is possible to fake passports and other means of identity verification. Boarding passes are probably more of a challenge given how closely they are generated to the time of travel. But if there's one thing that is pretty much impossible to fake, it's your face and all of its minute characteristics.
Read more: Why B2B Travel Technology is Vital to the Industry
How biometric boarding works
Today's facial recognition tech is getting smarter. The system deployed by Vision-Box captures a live, high-quality image of each traveller’s unique biometric facial traits. These are compared to images captured previously. In this case, those previous images are taken at immigration. But in the future, it's possible to imagine a system that has every traveller's face on file already.
After confirming the identity and eligibility of the passenger on that specific flight, the gateway opens and the traveller can board the aircraft.
Justin Erbacci, chief innovation and technology officer at Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA), the airport oversight and operations department, said, “This industry-first deployment of innovative solutions from the US Customs and Border Protection and Vision-Box, shows the amazing potential of using biometrics to speed up the boarding process while maintaining safety and security. We have been very impressed with the results thus far, and love to see the passengers’ excitement at being some of the first in the world to use facial recognition”.
Miguel Leitmann, Chief Executive Officer and Founder at Vision-Box explained the reasons for success: “Vision-Box made use of state-of-the-art biometric technology, able to deliver high-quality data that drastically enhance matching accuracy, sustained by in-house developed Deep Machine Learning engines for superior facial capture."
"The results present a solution that addresses current security, efficiency and flow-control challenges in a relevant, revolutionary way. We are very proud to have come up with an industry-changing solution that all stakeholders involved in the process rely on. In the end, it’s about collaboratively raising the security and efficiency standards while eliminating obstacles from the traveller’s way, offering frictionless interactions and the best experience to guests until they’re comfortably seating in the aircraft.
