Vision-Box facial recognition system matches 94 percent of travelers in Australian trial

Jul 12, 2018, 4:06 pm EDT | Chris Burt

The first trial of the “face on the move” passenger recognition technology by Australia’s Department of Home Affairs has concluded with the system correctly identifying 94 percent of travelers, iTnews reports.

The trial of facial recognition for automated biometric border control at Canberra Airport uses technology from Vision-Box. Home Affairs intends to process 90 percent of international travelers with automated systems by 2020. The new smartgates began operation in November in contact mode, with travelers inserting their passports for processing, but moved on to the “face on the move” process, which was trialed by 2200 passengers.

The system correctly matched an average of 94 percent of travelers, and did not make any false positive matches, the department said in response to questions from budget estimates. The technology is now being trialed at Sydney Airport, according to Home Affairs. In a biometric data capture exercise, images were collected from roughly 20,000 travelers to assess the performance of the facial biometric matching algorithm. The algorithm was set for a high throughput threshold, and had a false accept rate below 0.025 percent.

Sydney Airport recently began another test of facial recognition technology, which iTnews reports is also from Vision-Box, for “couch-to-gate” processing with only one passport check.

Vision-Box recently opened a new office in New Delhi as part of its strategy to expand its global presence.