The objective of Thales is to facilitate, secure and above all, accelerate passenger flows at airports, and has just introduced a new border control system that uses your eyes to identify you. How? Well, upon arrival at the airport, a first kiosk handles your biometric registration. It records your facial features, including your irises, scans your passport to verify whether it really is yours, then prints your boarding pass. Your data is then shared with other computers around the airport.
Then, when you arrive at immigration control, just a few seconds are sufficient at the second kiosk, which acts as an identity check officer. Pascal Zenoni, Head of identity and border controls products at Thales: "We will quickly and reliably acquire an image of the passenger’s iris remotely, so there’s no need for any sensor contact. The system will say whether or not it knows the person; if it does not, there is an operator who will take charge of the passenger. "
With this system, travellers can thus pass border controls in less than fifteen seconds instead of the usual twenty minutes. This machine, whose price remains confidential, is now ready to enter service. Several airports have expressed interest. With this system, Thales does not intend to replace humans with machines, but allow screening agents to focus on other tasks requiring more staff, for example - in addition to analysing people against which technology cannot combat.
