Tokyo Narita Airport Begins Trialing Facial Recognition Boarding
On Tuesday, Tokyo Narita Airport began trialing the use of facial recognition for international travelers. When rolled out in July, the system known as Face Express will allow passengers to register their passport and boarding pass at a self-check-in machine. The machine will take a photo, scanning facial features, which will then serve as documentation throughout the terminal.
Tokyo Narita Airport today began trialing its new facial recognition system known as Face Express. Photo: Getty Images
New normal procedures
The airport is calling the move to the biometric process ‘new normal procedures with contactless tech’. The facial recognition technology is meant to reduce waiting times at bag drop and security checkpoints, as well as speed up the boarding process.
It will also mean less physical contact and touchpoints between ground staff, passengers, and self-service machines. Meanwhile, the trial itself only involves airport staff and not actual passengers, the Mainichi reports.
To begin with, Face Express will only be available for passengers traveling with All Nippon Airways (ANA) and Japan Airlines. However, the airport says it is intended to extend to other carriers gradually. The system will roll out in July and will also be implemented at Tokyo Haneda.
One of the main concerns over biometric boarding is that of privacy and data ownership. Narita Airport says that the passenger details, including photos and facial data, will only be stored for 24 hours after travel when they will be automatically deleted.
Personalized travel information the future?
Narita and Haneda’s Face Express system is provided by the NEC Corporation, which offers advanced biometric authentication technologies. It claims to feature the world’s most accurate precision for facial recognition.
The company has technology that will not only allow passengers to embark without fishing for their boarding pass or phone but also receive personalized travel information, such as gate location, on monitors throughout the terminal.
The idea of getting rid of bottlenecks around terminals and speeding up boarding was always an attractive proposition for biometrics. However, the need for a more contactless travel experience has proved an incentive to speed up adoption and reboot customer confidence.
The system will serve to streamline the terminal experience and minimize contact between staff and passengers. Photo: NEC Corporation
Contactless key to customer confidence?
Biometrics is set to be an important element as travel redesigns itself to a post-crisis world with, as Narita Airport describes it – new normal procedures. Airports across the US such as San Francisco, Orlando, and Dallas-Fort Worth are already offering the technology for international travelers. United and Delta are also conducting trials to expand facial recognition for domestic passengers in San Francisco and Detroit respectively.
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, Iberia has begun biometric testing in Madrid, and Dubai Airports has introduced facial recognition to speed up the immigration processes. Just as the smartphone did away with the need for a paper ticket, facial recognition and biometrics may well do away with the electronic boarding pass. Quite probably, with the additional information on vaccination status.
Dubai Airports introduces facial recognition to fast-track immigration processes
The new biometric system has been deployed at 122 smart gates at arrival and departure terminals in Dubai airports so far to enable passengers to complete passport control procedures.
A new fast-track passport control service that uses face and iris-recognition technologies has been launched at Dubai airports.
The service which uses artificial intelligence (AI) technology was launched by the General Directorate of Residency and Foreigners Affairs in Dubai (GDRFA-Dubai) and it aims to expedite immigration processes.
The new biometric system has been deployed at 122 smart gates at arrival and departure terminals in Dubai airports so far to enable passengers to complete passport control procedures. Pre-registration is required to avail of the service.
Outbound passengers can avail of the new fast-track service at the smart gates located at the departure terminal after obtaining their boarding pass and completing pre-registration.
The newly developed system is part of GDRFA-Dubai’s efforts to develop innovative smart services in line with the leadership’s directives to integrate advanced technologies into all government services to enhance people’s quality of life.
Major General Mohammed Ahmed Al Marri said GDRFA-Dubai is keen to launch new projects and initiatives that use state-of-the-art technologies to transform service efficiency. He said the department will continue developing its services to enhance customer experience, as part of efforts to contribute to the leadership’s vision to make Dubai one of the smartest cities in the world.
National identity systems still works in progress, biometrics investment market strong
Government digital ID efforts and investments in biometric technology made up most of the top stories on Biometric Update over the past week. Plans to fast-track the rollout of PhilSys in the Philippines, mobile driver’s license adoption in the U.S., even as REAL ID implementation is delayed again, and the need for biometric passports to include trustworthy facial images made headlines. Meanwhile Paravision’s facial recognition will be integrated by HID Global, one of its latest investors, NEC has developed an AI engine to speed up biometric matching, and NEC of America has launched a new subsidiary.
Top biometrics news of the week
Registrations for the PhilSys national digital identity have been granted an essential service exemption from the country’s restrictions on movement due to COVID-19, as the government attempts to fast-track the program. The efforts also include a scaled-up online system, which handles registration up to biometrics enrollment, as the website has been plagued by performance issues.
The smart home technology market is forecast to be worth over $70 billion in five years, and biometric locks could play a significant role in the expected growth, as explained in a recent Fingerprint Cards webcast and blog post. Insurance brokers are starting to incentivize smart locks, and biometric locks can already help people save money, according to research by Bankrate.
Mobile driver’s licenses are coming to more U.S. States, and could reach eight by early 2022, and they can do an increasing number of things with acceptance from an increasing number of agencies. They are coming online faster than REAL ID, the deadline for which has been pushed back again, now until 2023.
Trusted travel documents are too frequently failing up to their name, according to a Secure Identity Alliance report, and that includes biometric passports. Altered images, including face morphs, are too common, and between under-trained border personnel and too many false positives, there are several areas countries can address to improve their border security.
The implications of digital transformation and convergence for identity proofing are examined in a blog post by Onfido VP of Design Mark Opland by reference to the Locksmith Paradox. He argues that “strategically architected friction,” based on a deep understanding of customer expectations and perceptions, can actually benefit users and the businesses that need to know who they are.
The biometrics industry is still working out what to do about face spoofing, which Innovatrics CEO and CTO Jan Lunter describes in an editorial for BetaNews as a move from verifying identity to verifying humanity. Lunter says active liveness checks cause enrollment to be abandoned 20 to 30 percent of the time, while passive liveness detection requires innovation right down to collecting images for dataset training.
Paravision’s impressive $23 million funding round is lent extra intrigue by the inclusion of biometric system integrator and established partner HID Global among its investors. The company plans to put the money into technology development and partner teams, as it expands the global reach of its facial recognition technology.
The Tekuni newsletter features an examination of facial recognition in Japan through an interview with Autify Senior Machine Learning Engineer Nauman Mustafa. Mustafa talks about the use of face biometrics for contactless airport processes, the risks the technology can pose through biased performance, and how public awareness is necessary to inform societal decisions its increasing use will raise.
Deployments of digital health passes are advancing in France and the UK, but uncertainty around what they will be required for, and how they will ensure trust is raising concerns. A partnership between Mastercard and Cassava, meanwhile, will see the Africa CDC Travel Pass built into Mastercard’s Community Pass platform to expand its reach.
Global aviation is slowly ramping up operations, and the G20’s advice to help the process along includes increasing the use of biometrics and contactless technologies. Jumio similarly emphasizes the value of biometrics and online identity verification, while a trial of the Aruba Health App with SITA and the extension of Israel’s Green Pass seem to indicate a general trend towards digital health passes.
The extensive examination of digital health passes in their various forms and permutations by ID4Africa wrapped up recently, with 20 different experts sharing insights on everything from health record stacks based on centralized registries to verifiable credentials to ways self-sovereign identity can be used in proving health status. Part two considered national initiatives, the Good Health Pass initiative and innovative technologies, highlighting the need for a trustworthy off-line authentication method. Part three considered the chain of trust for health testing or vaccination, from the event to use of a credential which proves it happened, with a CEO panel discussion, a presentation on the EU Green Pass, and a segment on repurposing proven technologies.
Interest in using biometrics and other new methods to authenticate payments is high among Africans, according to new research from Mastercard. More people expect to use QR codes in the next year, but 42 percent expect to use biometrics, just as the business environment appears to be improving for digital startups in Nigeria.
NEC has developed an artificial intelligence engine that it says can accelerate facial recognition and other applications where real-time analysis of time series data is involved by up to 20 times. The neuroscience-inspired innovation does not degrade accuracy, the company says, by using a confidence threshold to deliver results faster.
Demand from the U.S. government for biometrics and other advanced technologies has prompted the launch of new NEC America subsidiary NEC National Security Systems, which will be led by Benji Hutchinson. The new company is expected to reach a Special Security Agreement with the government and achieve Top Secret Facility Clearance Level to support its federal customers, and notes its parent company’s legacy of investing in technology R&D.
SITA was launched by the air travel industry 25 years ago in preparation for the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, and the company is celebrating its anniversary by holding its own Olympics to raise funds for the COVAX initiative. From early development of the electronic travel authorization system to pioneering biometric kiosks, SITA reviews its work helping 60 governments control their borders.
The EmotiBit biometric wearable, which can provide insight into the wearer’s emotions, as well as physiological traits and movement, according to its inventors, completed its crowdfunding campaign with $118,692 in pledges, smashing through its Kickstarter goal of $15,000. If the enthusiasm of the crowdfunding community is any indication, we will be hearing more from this project soon. The estimated delivery date for pledge rewards is February 2022.
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