NEC partners with SITA for touchless airport biometrics, celebrates 121 years of innovation

NEC Corporation and SITA have entered a global agreement to roll out a walk-through, contactless digital identity solution for airports leveraging NEC’s biometric identity management platform, the company announced.

The new system would combine NEC’s I:Delight identity management platform with SITA Smart Path and SITA Flex to ensure a mobile-enabled, touchless and hygienic experience, according to Airports Council International and IATA guidelines. Passengers will use their digital identity on a mobile phone for facial biometrics-enabled check-in, payments, bag drop, security screening, immigration processing and boarding. Passengers are instantly identified with high accuracy.

SITA Smart Path and SITA Flex solutions are able to integrate mobile and NEC’s biometric technologies in their infrastructure and airline applications.

“NEC is pleased to collaborate with SITA to provide ‘NEC I:Delight,’ which utilizes NEC’s cutting-edge digital identity solutions that capitalize on biometrics technologies to deliver a unified customer experience across a wide range of services,” said in a prepared statement Masakazu Yamashina, NEC executive vice president.

“We know that passengers value the benefit of a truly self-service experience. Leveraging SITA’s common-use footprint in more than 460 airports globally and NEC’s award-winning identity management technology, we are well placed to help our customers deliver a truly unique and efficient experience in the airport, particularly during these challenging times where there is increased focus on the health and safety of passengers,” said in a prepared statement Barbara Dalibard, CEO of SITA.

Celebrates 121 years of innovation

On July 17, NEC Corporation celebrated 121 years of tech innovation. Established in 1899 by Kunihiko Iwadare, NEC has been guided by the “NEC New Way” credo of providing advanced world-class products and services. At the time, it was the first joint venture with foreign capital founded in Japan, in partnership with Western Electric Company (currently Alcatel-Lucent).

In 1919, the company was already producing the first domestic Type 1 common-battery switchboards for long-distance toll calls, and in 1924 it was already tapping into the wireless business. Since then, it has produced 50kW transmitter tubes, transistors, microwave PTM (Pulse Time Modulation) multiplexing equipment and equipment for satellite transmissions. In 1952, it was the first communications company to receive the Deming Application Prize. Proposed in 1997, the Earth Simulator was completed in 2002, a supercomputer system to predict climate change on a global scale.

Global leader in biometric authentication

A global leader in biometric authentication, NEC’s biometric algorithms ranked first or second in several accuracy categories in last year’s NIST’s Facial Recognition Vendor Test (FRVT) Identification report. Since the 1970s, NEC has researched and developed fingerprint recognition, palm print recognition and face recognition, currently tapping into iris recognition, voice recognition, and ear acoustic authentication technology. All technologies are marketed under the umbrella “Bio-Idiom.” NEC has deployed more than 1,000 systems with biometric fingerprint and face recognition technologies in 70 countries, in fields ranging from criminal investigation, immigration control, and national identification to the entertainment industry.

Article Topics

airports  |  biometric identification  |  biometrics  |  contactless biometrics  |  digital identity  |  facial recognition  |  NEC  |  passenger processing  |  SITA