Futuristic technology to result in seamless international travel

With terrorism, illegal immigration and drug trafficking on the rise, many countries are drastically tightening their border control programs. Also, tourism and international travel have been on the rise, thanks to excellent air connectivity. 

The Australian airports have been witnessing a rise of 25 per cent in passenger traffic every year and it is expected to touch the 50 million mark shortly. This sharp increase in traffic means longer queues in the immigration check-points. If you have ever waited for hours in these lines that move at a snail’s pace, you will know the sheer frustration. However, I noticed much shorter lines this time in Australia and I noticed that they have launched ‘Smart Gates’ in their airports. 

The Smart Gates is a machine that uses the information in e-passports and facial recognition technology to perform checks usually conducted by an Australian Border Force officer. It enables eligible travellers arriving at Australia’s eight major international airport’s the option to self-process through passport control. All one has to do is present the e-passport and a sophisticated camera scans your face and matches it with the one in your passport. This human-less system has increased the efficiency of processing and the lines move real quick while still maintaining strict vigilance. It is estimated that in the last couple of years, over 20 million passengers had self-processed through the departure Smart Gates. 

Another prominent thing that I have noticed is dedicated sections at the immigration control for holders of e-passports. What’s an e-passport, you ask? It’s a passport that has a microchip embedded in it and an international e-passport symbol on the front cover. The microchip contains the same personal information that is on the photo page of the e-passport, including a digitised photograph. Indian government recently announced that e-passports will eventually be rolled out to all people. It was expected to be rolled out in 2017 but it looks like 2018 may be the year when e-passports will see the light of the day. 

For Indians travelling globally, this will ease their movement. This move will also nullify the fake passports issue. The Australian government has announced an ambitious plan to roll out an entirely contactless, biometric identification across all their international airports by 2020. In what will be the first in the world, international travellers entering the country will be processed via a completely unmanned system that uses fingerprints, iris and facial recognition. Their goal is to recognise a person with a high rate of accuracy based on their face, iris, and fingerprints. They are building an exhaustive backlog of the database of people. 

If this ambitious program succeeds, then many other countries including India are expected to implement this technology too. In short, international travel will become a lot easier and with increased security, it will also become a lot safer. 

The interesting thing is that Indian IT companies are actively involved in implementing Artificial Intelligence and robotics to design the automated cross-border vigilance solution.