Biometric gates reduce airport touchpoints in Czech Republic, Bangladesh, Finland

New deployments of automatic gates with face biometrics to reduce airport touchpoints have been announced by SITA in Prague, Czech Republic and by Veridos in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Vision-Box’ EES project in Helsinki, Finland, meanwhile, continues to scale.

SITA has deployed its TS6 Kiosks to Václav Havel Airport Prague, along with SITA Flex, to enable touchless passenger journeys through mobile phones or biometrics, according to a company announcement.

The deployment includes 35 check-in kiosks, integrated with SITA Flex and complemented by overhead displays.

“This investment in our terminal infrastructure is as much about today’s requirements as it is about preparing us for a new automated and more digitalized passenger journey in the future,” says Prague Airport Operations Director Martin Kucera. “Based on the open tender, SITA has offered us a long-term solution that allows us to bring even better customer experience to our passengers while using the maximum functionality of the technology implemented at Prague Airport, the gateway to the Czech Republic.”

Veridos border control system

Veridos has installed the first biometric e-gates for automated border control (ABC) processes in Bangladesh, the company says in an announcement.

Travelers place their passport on the gates’ reader, and a face biometric match is performed on an image collected by a camera built into the exit door, for what the company says is a fast and intuitive verification process.

A dozen gates were inaugurated in a recent ceremony at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in the capital, Dhaka. Veridos plans to install 16 more biometric gates in Dhaka, and 22 more between 2 other international airports and 2 land border crossings.

Veridos conducted training sessions for more than 50 border control officers, supported by a local partner, to ensure smooth operation of the new gates.

“In addition to a high-tech ePassport production infrastructure, we are honored to support Bangladesh with our automated border control expertise,” says Veridos CEO Andreas Räschmeier. “The unique design, the high-quality material and the established underlying system make our eGates the most modern border control solution on the market. The ability to verify identities within just 14 seconds via eGates will soon lead to a welcome reduction in waiting times.”

Vision-Box EES project

Vision-Box has published a case study based on its deployment of biometric ABC gates at Helsinki Airport, in cooperation with the Finnish border agency (RAJA) for the EU’s Entry/Exit System (ESS).

Though the EU ESS goes live in 26 Schengen member states in 2022, Vision-Box and Finland began working on the deployment in 2018. The goal of the project was to provide a scalable system to keep track of EU and non-EU travelers, while ensuring regulatory compliance, supporting airport personnel and enhancing operational efficiency, according to the Finnish Border Guard case study. Enabling contactless transactions was also a key part of the project vision.

The pre-registration and at-home biometric enrolment process is enabled by the Orchestra platform’s encrypted Passenger Data Envelope, with facial recognition then used as a reconciliation key throughout the airport journey.

Vision-Box is in the process of deploying a total of 50 self-service ABC gates, 40 self-service pre-enrolment EES Totems, and 56 kits for face and fingerprint biometric capture at booths.

“By unleashing the power of Orchestra, sustained by last generation touchpoints and our Visiontec biometric matching engine, together with RAJA we have designed a touchless experience which allows to consume pre-enrolled information to offer on-the-move contactless clearance at all border crossing points,” states Vision-Box Vice President of Strategic Sales and Global Partnerships Jeff Lennon. “This is the first time in the world that such a process is made available at scale. We are glad that we can share some of the lessons learned through the publication of a dedicated case-study which hopefully will help other border authorities in their future projects”

Article Topics

biometric identification  |  biometrics  |  border management  |  contactless biometrics  |  eGates  |  facial recognition  |  identity verification  |  passenger processing  |  SITA  |  Veridos  |  Vision-Box