New facial-recognition tools being tested at Orlando International Airport could soon be keeping track of travelers at departure gates across the country.
Imagine you’re preparing to board an international flight at a U.S. airport. Instead of juggling your belongings as you pull out your passport for the gate agent, you barely break your stride as you head onto the jetway. The agent reviews your identity on a computer screen.
This swift identity-confirmation process, powered by facial recognition, could someday be coming to airports across America. But travelers will see it first at Orlando International Airport, which will test new biometric technology for select international departures next month.
Passengers leaving the United States from Orlando could encounter one of three 90-day pilot programs, including a “contactless corridor,” a subtly defined zone with several mounted cameras that can simultaneously process several people in motion.
The corridor is a collaboration among three biometric technology companies Paravision, AiFi and Emboss and pairs cameras and artificial intelligence with facial-recognition and movement-tracking software.
Our goal is that you don’t have to tell travelers to do anything specific at all,” Joey Pritikin, Paravision’s chief product officer, said during a recent demonstration of the product at the airport’s innovation lab. “The idea is to make the technology disappear,” he added. “We know exactly who is where, when.”
As passengers approach the gate agent, cameras capture their biometrics, which are rapidly matched against government records, including a photo database of travelers, to confirm their identities and their authorization to be in the United States. The gate agent reviews this information on a separate screen.
Biometric identity verification, optional for American citizens but required for foreign visitors, dates back to a 2001 congressional mandate in the aftermath of Sept. 11. The technology has long raised concerns among privacy experts, who question how biometric data is used and stored, as well as its accuracy.
Helping Families Wait Less
Orlando International, Florida’s busiest airport, with 56 million passengers so far this year, has emerged as a prominent testing ground for biometric technology. This is, at least in part, because facial recognition helps efficiently process the many families who come to visit attractions like Disney World and the new Universal Epic Universe theme park. At the airport on a recent Thursday, multigenerational families and children clutching Disney stuffed animals and wearing Minnie Mouse ears filled the security lines.
Helping Families Wait Less
Orlando International, Florida’s busiest airport, with 56 million passengers so far this year, has emerged as a prominent testing ground for biometric technology. This is, at least in part, because facial recognition helps efficiently process the many families who come to visit attractions like Disney World and the new Universal Epic Universe theme park. At the airport on a recent Thursday, multigenerational families and children clutching Disney stuffed animals and wearing Minnie Mouse ears filled the security lines.
“Technology enables us to move passengers more effectively without compromising safety and security,” said Lance Lyttle, the chief executive of the Greater Orlando Aviation Authority, which manages the airport. International destinations served by the airport include cities like Frankfurt, Paris and São Paulo, Brazil.
In May, Orlando International teamed up with U.S. Customs and Border Protection to introduce a faster biometric process for Americans entering the country. The optional program, called enhanced passenger processing, uses facial recognition to confirm travelers’ identities at the C.B.P. checkpoint without requiring them to show a passport. It is now available at more than a dozen U.S. airports, including Kennedy International in New York and Charlotte Douglas International in Charlotte, N.C.
