Home Affairs `face on the move` biometrics trial scores 94 percent

Source: IT News, 12/07/2018

In Aussie airport first.
The Department of Home Affairs’ initial ‘face on the move’ passenger
recognition technology trials at an Australian airport have correctly
matched 94 percent of travellers.
The result is from a Canberra Airport trial of the department’s new
automated biometric border control solution that uses facial
recognition to clear travellers at arrivals.
The new solution is intended to match individuals against facial
images stored in airlines’ advanced passenger processing systems,
removing the need for travellers to present their passports at the
gate to clear immigration
Home Affairs is in the process of replacing its fleet of ageing
Morpho-based arrivals smartgates at all international airports with
the solution.
It awarded border technology provider Vision-Box �` who currently
provide the newer smartgate technology at departure gates around the
country �` a $22.5 million deal last July to overhaul the arrivals
process.
The department is aiming for 90 percent of international travellers to
be processed by automated means by 2020.
Canberra Airport was the first to receive the new smartgates last
November, but initially operated in ‘contact’ mode only and still
required travellers to insert their passports to be processed.
But now the department has used the automated solution to conduct a
‘face on the move’ trial with 2200 travellers.
“A ‘face on the move’ trial was undertaken at the Exit Marshall Point
and involved 2200 travellers,” the department said in answers to
questions on notice from budget estimates.
“On average, 94 percent of the participating travellers were correctly
matched, and no identification errors occurred.”
Sydney airport trial
The department also revealed that it has begun trialling the new
smartgate technology at Sydney Airport.
The “biometric data capture exercise” collected images from around
20,000 travellers to “assess the matching performance of the latest
facial biometric matching algorithm from a world-leading vendor that
will be used in protection systems”.
The trial’s false accept rate for matching “captured traveller images
against reference images” was “measured to be below 1-in-4000” or
0.025 percent.
However this was “for a high throughput threshold setting”.
Sydney Airport began conducting its own `couch-to-gate` biometrics
trial with select international Qantas passengers last week.
The facial recognition technology, which is also provided by
Vision-Box, allows passengers to complete most pre-boarding processes
using just their face.