Navigating tomorrow: Unveiling 2024’s 3 major trends

Passengers now have higher expectations than ever before, which is not surprising for those in the travel industry. According to IATA GPS 2023, 46% of passengers have used biometrics (+12% vs 2022), with a positive satisfaction rate of 85%. Between 70% to 80% of passengers with carry-on or checked-in bags expect a processing time of less than 45 minutes. This requires airports, airlines, and border forces to provide a more expedited processing experience in which biometric programs play a vital role in meeting such high expectations Therefore, we anticipate 3 major trends to be accelerated by 2024: 

1. “Walk the talk”: executing seamless travel vision with fully live biometric programs  

When looking at tenders, contactless travel using biometrics is part of the requirements, supported by a recommended practice issued by IATA. However, the adoption of biometric processing services happens gradually, starting with biometric-enabled solutions such as CUSS check-in and enrolment kiosks, mobile enrolment SDK, manual enrolment, self-baggage drops, boarding and border control gates. These are implemented in a specific terminal, either through new devices or retrofitting of legacy products, before scaling up. Identity management platforms are essential to make the fully seamless journey possible when a network of products and/or services is in place across various use cases, from off-site mobile enrolment to boarding a plane.  

Many institutions, ranging from border control to travel, are at the forefront of adopting new technologies that will bring us closer to a fully seamless biometric experience. At Vision-Box, we have been contributing to this trend by implementing biometric programs at a global scale such as FACES from AirAsia (Malaysia), the biometric path from Emirates (Middle East) and the biometric system in Felipe Angeles International Airport (Mexico) EZPaz Malaysia Airports, UKBF border automation, Schiphol border automation, Finland border automation, Toronto border automation to name a few.      

2. Improving performance and transparency in biometric-enabled solutions  

According to specialized sources, governments in countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, and Korea, are implementing facial recognition systems more frequently. To reduce potential biases in the system, they are requesting diverse individuals to participate in testing. Biases in biometric systems have been tested for three years, and new updated standards such as ISO/IEC 19795-10 are returning to the market. It's important to prioritize security when it comes to borders, as attacks are becoming more advanced using AI to generate fake IDs. 

At Vision-Box, we incorporate three key principles to survive high levels of stress: flexible, innovative, and best practice-oriented biometric algorithms into our research. And then, to enhance the performance and usability of our biometric solutions, we are exploring a four-fold approach: 

• Reduced demographic bias: By increasing the amount and variability of available data and designing more robust training strategies that account for bias related to age group, gender, and ethnicity, demographic bias can be reduced. 

• Decrease vulnerability to spoofing attacks: Our biometric solutions have person attack detection (PAD) algorithms that reduce vulnerability to spoofing attacks. These algorithms are designed to mitigate attacks on face-acquisition systems such as liveness attacks (printed photos, 3D-face masks, mobile phones, etc.) and morphing attacks (images generated by meshing the biometric traits of two different people). This means that our biometric solutions are more secure and reliable than ever before. 

• Improved transparency and compliance: The European Commission is leading the first global regulation of AI usage, which guides our development process towards improved transparency and compliance, moving away from the traditional black-box design.  

• Improved precision: We use third-party evaluations for our face-matching internal benchmarking, like the National Institute of Standard and Technology (NIST) FRTE 1:1 Verification and the Maryland Test Facility (MdTF) Technology Rallies. 

3. Migration to a hybrid edge-to-cloud facial recognition infrastructure    

As we mentioned before, speed and convenience come as top priorities for passengers. To cope with a high throughput ratio, a combination of cloud-based services with computing power is of utmost importance. The resulting system is very scalable, with higher flexibility for upgrades, security, speed, and cost control. As evidence, in March this year, TSA (Transport and Security Administration in the USA) released new cybersecurity requirements for airport and aircraft operators. In the coming years, businesses are likely to adopt a hybrid edge-to-cloud approach for facial recognition, as network and bandwidth usage has become an important consideration, along with simplifying hardware deployment and reducing critical infrastructure costs.   

At Vision-Box, we strive to balance our customer's demand for cloud services with the need for reduced delay in our touchpoints. To achieve this, we believe in a hybrid approach for many key services. The cloud provides a centrally managed, scalable, and globally available platform for management tasks like configuration, performance reporting, and health monitoring. Additionally, the cloud offers centralized and secure data storage for seamless enablement. Our touchpoints are designed to perform most transaction operations locally, which improves transaction efficiency, speed, and overall quality of service.  

In conclusion, facial biometrics remains the key factor in achieving a fully seamless travel experience, provided that an ID management platform is in place. Innovations like Emirates on travel or UKBF (UK Border Force) in immigration are driving the travel industry towards fewer physical barriers, allowing travellers to walk through corridors without doors and experience a low friction, high-security, and high-throughput journey. Vision-box is a pioneer in delivering a “free flow” solution enabled by low-latency facial recognition services. This new workflow demands the fastest processing experience possible, which, in turn, requires a new operational model for the business as a cloud-based approach with edge computing.  

Based on current client demands, we believe this trend will accelerate in 2024, leading to a continuous redefinition of industry infrastructure and network connections. That's why we are reinforcing our cloud capabilities to address a multi-cloud solution, using containerization of technologies.  

If you want to know more about the trends of 2024 or learn more about our solutions and how we can help with queues in airports and cruises, providing travellers with a smoother, faster, and seamless journey, contact us.