TSA touts time savings. Vision-Box boasts a big finish in biometric rally

An official with the U.S.’ Transportation Security Administration says the agency is closer to being able to screen people as they walk through some airports. Its parent agency’s testing for airport conditions lends some support to the claim.

Darby LaJoye, executive assistant administrator for the TSA‘s security operations, says a trio of technologies are evolving in ways that should, in the near term, move people more efficiently through airports by reducing that number of times that items, including ID, have to be removed by passengers and examined by agents.

LaJoye is referring for the most part to facial recognition systems at credential authentication technology, or CAT, stations. He said face scans will be optional, but for those who agree to be scanned, should keep crowds moving, according to Sinclair Broadcast Group.

A bigger time saver will be computed tomography systems that can more clearly see dangers hidden in travelers’ bags. Fewer bags will need to be examined by hand.

At the same time, travel and border biometric systems maker Vision-Box, says its facial recognition scored high marks during the 2021 U.S. Homeland Security Department biometrics rally. Results of the event were published with vendors anonymized earlier this year.

The company says that, setting aside acquisition errors, its face biometrics engine topped competitor’s algorithms across all capture devices. Vision-Box’s alias for the rally was ‘Yampa.’

Vision-Box scored between 98 percent and 99.8 percent matching faces without masks acquired by different capture systems, and from 90.1 percent to 96.8 percent on masked faces.

The rally saw AI algorithm developers try to acquire and match images regardless of external factors like age, gender, race and mask use.

Article Topics

airports  |  Biometric Technology Rally  |  biometric testing  |  biometrics  |  DHS  |  face biometrics  |  passenger processing  |  TSA  |  Vision-Box