Putting the AI in airport: Aurora’s Deep Learning powers facial recognition and more
With Heathrow embracing facial-recognition technology and other airports following suit, we hear from field-leader Aurora about where we are with the march of the software, how we got there and where we are going.
Recent months have seen a flurry of publicity for Heathrow Airport Limited (HAL) and British Airways’ (BA) facial recognition-equipped self-boarding gates, which allow domestic passengers to scan their own boarding passes and, when approved, simply walk on board the aircraft. Those new gates are powered by technology from Northamptonshire company Aurora, a leader in the field of facial recognition and UK pioneers in the use of artificial intelligence.
The self-boarding gates are an extension of the technology which has been in use at Heathrow since 2012. Design, engineering and project management consultancy Atkins is the company responsible for the passenger processing system of which Aurora’s facial recognition technology is part.
Andrew McCue-Brown, Identity Management Solutions Product Manager, at Atkins, explains. “Aurora and Atkins have worked together at Heathrow Airport for twelve years,” he says. “We’ve integrated Aurora’s face recognition technology into our PASS2 passenger-processing solution, which has enrolled and verified tens of millions of passengers at the airport since 2012. The technology has since been integrated into our Identity Management Toolkit (IDMT).”