New technology demonstrated at last week’s Paris Air Show could drastically automate passenger processing at airports. Developed by French industrial engineering group Thales, the technology is essentially a robot that would screen and check-in air travel passengers.
The machine is able to use biometric technology to scan the faces on passports as well as the faces and irises of the passengers themselves. It automatically prints boarding passes featuring encrypted face biometric data, which can then be scanned by staffers at the gate to an airplane for final security clearance.
Thales has some experience in biometric passports, and it’s building on that here with its new robot concept; but of course this is a booming field with a number of interesting avenues opening up. The European Commission is currently exploring its options for biometric security screening not only at airports but at various border checkpoints on land as well, while in America the TSA PreCheck program is using a similar system to speed up passenger screening at numerous airports.
Still, Thales’ new system is remarkable in the degree to which it automates passenger check-in at airports. If adopted on a large scale going forward, it could become the most impactful use of biometric security screening that the aviation industry has seen yet.
Source: The Telegraph
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June 23, 2015 – by Alex Perala
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