REGULAR air travellers may have to let a machine look them straight in the eye if they are to get through the world’s busiest airports quickly in future.
Security, already heightened, will become even tougher in the event of war with Iraq and its aftermath, leading to longer delays at airports. But passengers who are prepared to enrol with an iris recognition service will have their identity verified in seconds when they arrive at an airport by simply glancing into a camera at the immigration desk.
Extensive trials with the service have already been carried out at Heathrow and are now being evaluated.
London City Airport is introducing biometric technology to guarantee the identity of staff working in secure areas and is considering extending the service to passengers.
Leading airports in the United States and Europe are also investigating new technology developed in Munich by Siemens that creates a three-dimensional image of the whole face and then uses this electronic “contoured face mask” to identify the person. The technology will be in addition to measures which are still being introduced in some parts of the world, including the screening of all hold baggage and closer inspection of individual passengers.
Some airlines, including Virgin Atlantic, employ profilers to look out for suspicious passengers and monitor their progress through terminals.
Business travellers are becoming accustomed to thorough searches, a detailed examination of laptops and other technical equipment and even being asked to take off their shoes.
BAA has employed an extra 750 security staff at its London and Scottish airports during the past year and has just begun a recruitment drive for another 750 to help reduce the delays that extra checks create.
It is now in discussion with the UK Immigration Service, airlines and EyeTicket Coporation, the technology supplier, about the future use of iris recognition.
Mick Temple, BAA Heathrow’s managing director, said: “Heathrow is always looking at new and innovative ways of improving passenger journeys through the airport.”
A BAA report said the six-month trial was “successful in simplifying and speeding up the arrivals process at immigration for participating passengers.
“It demonstrated that iris recognition is a safe, effective and robust technology in a real airport and that it can positively identify individuals without the need for supporting documents.”
During the trial, 800 frequent flyers enrolled with the system, presenting documents to verify their identity and then looking into a special video camera that took a close-up image of the iris.
Data was extracted from the image, digitally encoded and later compared with the person’s iris on entering the immigration hall.
The system relies on the fact that every person has a unique iris pattern.
EyeTicket said that no laser or other potentially harmful light source is involved in the process and claimed that the system is the most accurate, single-factor identification method in the world.
The technology being introduced by London City Airport is a biometric authentication engine, developed by Daon, which will verify the identity of all 1,600 staff.
The system uses fingerprint, iris and voice recognition but initally staff wishing to enter a secure or restricted zone will have to present a photo ID pass and have their fingerprint checked.
Richard Gooding, the airport’s managing director, said: “We are starting with something very simple but our vision is to take this further, speeding customers through the airport and passport check-in.”
Researchers at Siemens have discovered that by projecting a pattern consisting of parallel coloured lines onto a face and then taking a colour video picture of it, an accurate three-dimensional image will be created.
Dr Hartmut Runge, a member of the research team, said: “At airports, bank tills and R&D sites, it is important to establish the identity of a person automatically with a high degree of certainty.
“The biometric methods used must be efficient, difficult to deceive and easily accepted by the public and these requirement are met by personal identification methods using video images of the face.”
