Have you ever had a flight delayed because there have been no other passengers?
This can have been an irritant up to now at Singapore’s Changi Airport, which is testing facial recognition systems that might in the long run help locate lost travelers or those that spend an excessive amount of time in duty-free shops.
Changi Airport, ranked primary on this planet for six years in a row in a survey by air travel consultancy Skytrax, is how it may well use the most recent technology to unravel a spread of problems – from reducing runway taxi times to faster predicting aircraft arrivals.
The ruling comes because the island nation launches a “smart nation” initiative aimed toward using technology to enhance lives, create economic opportunities and construct social connections. However, the proposed use of lamppost-mounted cameras which might be linked to facial recognition software has raised privacy concerns.
Steve Lee, chief information officer at Changi Airport Group, told Reuters the airport’s experiments weren’t being conducted from a “big brother” perspective but were solving real problems.
“We have loads of reports of missing passengers… so one possible use case that involves mind is to detect and find people on board an aircraft. With the airline’s approval, after all,” Lee said.
Facial recognition technology typically allows users to match the faces of individuals captured on cameras with faces in databases.
Lee said they’ve tested technology which may allow this and are working with various corporations, adding that they need to have some capability to achieve this in a 12 months.
Although he declined to call the businesses involved, France’s Idemia, formerly generally known as OT-Morpho, has already provided facial recognition technology to Changi.
Chinese company Yitu, which recently opened its first international office in Singapore, told Reuters it was in talks with Changi Airport Group. Yitu claims its facial recognition platform can discover over 1.8 billion faces in lower than 3 seconds.
Passport free of charge
Changi’s newest terminal, T4, already uses facial recognition technology to supply self-service options during check-in, baggage drop, immigration and boarding.
This technology means there are fewer queues and fewer visible airport staff or security.
Luggage is handed over to unmanned booths where a photograph is taken and compared with the passport. You’re caught on the airport’s automated security gate again – your photo is used to confirm your identity on the boarding gate.
Changi is exploring how it may well implement facial recognition at its three legacy terminals for automatic baggage drop and immigration.
The airport sees T4 as a testing ground for its fifth terminal, which shall be operational in about ten years.
“Today you take your passport, show your face and show your boarding pass,” Lee said, adding, nevertheless, that it could be possible to make use of biometrics as a substitute.
“So in the long run, just placed on your face. You don’t need a passport,” he said.
Other technology trials on the airport use sensors to measure the moment the plane pushes away from the gate and takeoff. This data improves decision-making and reduces aircraft taxiing time by about 90 seconds per flight during peak hours, Lee said.
Another program uses artificial intelligence that collects data on wind, weather and landing direction to higher predict a plane’s arrival time.
Thanks to this technology, the airport is now capable of estimate the landing time of a plane two hours away, whereas previously it was only possible 30 hours upfront.
Lee said this helps increase efficiency in every little thing from gate scheduling to arrival queues.
He said that a wise nation strategy starts at a rustic’s airport. “When you come to the airport, you can’t say you’re a smart nation, and that’s not that smart.”
Source : Jakarta Post Office
