Panasonic supplies facial recognition to Osaka Expo 2025 for staff access

Panasonic Connect is supplying biometric technology to the Osaka-Kansai Expo 2025 in Japan, which is expected to host 28 million visitors over the next six months.

In a joint project with Dai Nippon Printing (DNP), the company is providing admission credential cards (AD Cards) and a facial recognition system to manage the access of staff during the event, which lasts from April 13th until October 13th, 2025. The system was introduced in early April and is designed to cover 100,000 people involved in the event.

The latest World Expo will also feature a facial recognition system developed by NEC for cashless payments and visitor access management. According to the Japan Association for the 2025 World Exposition, this will be the largest deployment of facial recognition in Japan for in-store payments and entrance authentication.

A facial recognition-based access control system from Panasonic was also deployed during the 2-year construction phase of the Expo 2025, during which it was used approximately 3 million times, according to the company. The technology was introduced in collaboration with construction management company Obayashi Corporation and covered 120,000 people working on building the 383-acre venue.

Panasonic says that the system contributed to a significant reduction of manpower, slicing the number of staff required for entry and exit operations to between one-fifth to one-sixth of the originally planned number.

The Osaka-headquartered firm also contributed to introducing AI systems to public infrastructure in the vicinity of the Expo site. Panasonic’s walk-through facial recognition ticket gate, developed jointly with Takamizawa Cybernetics, was implemented by Osaka Metro at 130 of its 134 stations.

Since 2023, the company has been participating in a road traffic analysis pilot with the Osaka National Highway Office using AI image sensing technology and drones. The test is scheduled for 2025 on the roads surrounding the Osaka-Kansai Expo sites.

Article Topics

access control  |  biometric identification  |  biometrics  |  Dai Nippon Printing (DNP)  |  facial recognition  |  Japan  |  Panasonic  |  workforce management