In light of the current COVID-19 pandemic, Veridos, a provider of integrated identity solutions, offers solutions that support seamless and contactless automated border control. In addition to automated border control solutions such as kiosk and eGate systems, Veridos is taking part in EU-funded research projects to enable the next generation of on-the-fly identity verification, investigating new biometric modalities.
Passport control is one of the most tiresome processes at airports, costing passengers time and testing their patience. For border control officers, checking identity documents involves a great deal of work. And COVID-19 adds additional stress: nobody wants to wait in long queues – especially with small distances between people – to finally present their passport to a border control officer.
This situation is mitigated by the autonomous identity verification solutions already in place, such as kiosks and eGates. With Veridos’ kiosk solution, the passenger can autonomously start the process of retrieving the data stored in the identity document’s chip. While the data is compared to databases, incoming travellers can already answer key questions about their stay. Thus, the actual time at the manual border control station is greatly reduced, and queues can be avoided.
eGates decrease the human interaction even more and make the process very easy for the passenger; the traveller only needs to place her or his passport on the eGate screen. All other steps of the process are completely contactless. After stepping into the eGate, the passenger’s face will be scanned to see if this biometric information matches the image stored in the chip of the electronic document. The check only takes about 14 seconds. Veridos has successfully implemented many automated border control solutions, including projects in Bangladesh, Morocco, and Luxembourg.
Veridos is heading the EU research project ‘D4FLY’ and is working together with its partners on the next generation of border control. The vision is a seamless on-the-fly border control solution that allows for faster identity verification with high accuracy by using multi-biometrics. The process would look like this:
- When arriving at the airport, travellers register at dedicated enrolment kiosks by placing their passport on the integrated passport reader.
- Next, a live image of the traveller is securely captured and compared with the passport photo to verify the identity of the traveller and additional biometric features are enrolled. In D4FLY, a combination of iris, 3D face and somatotype (the measurement of structural aspects of the human body based on a full-body image) are researched as suitable biometrics to be captured on the move during verification.
- When approaching the border at their destination, travellers no longer need to show their passports. They can simply use their smartphone as a token to pass through border control by walking through a "biometric corridor". Several sensors are installed in those corridors to capture the biometric data of the passengers. Biometric matching results are fused, i.e. combined, and provide high accuracy in identity verification, enabling a seamless and touchless border crossing experience while maintaining the highest levels of security.
The whole process was designed to be fully compliant with EU data protection and privacy regulations. The data enrolled is encrypted and securely stored to make another enrolment procedure unnecessary for the next trip; the data captured in the corridor for identity verification is immediately deleted.
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