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Sci-Fi Facial Scanners Will Hit Heathrow Airport As Soon As September

July 26, 2011 at 10:26 AM | by | Comments (0)

We already shared our tips and tricks on how to successfully make it through UK Passport Control, but now there’s some new technology available to the immigration officers. Facial recognition scanners might arrive at London-Heathrow as early as this September, so you better be looking your best after getting off that redeye flight.

The plan is to install the new devices into Terminal 1 and Terminal 5, but we’re thinking that if all goes well that they’ll eventually be new features in each and every terminal. It sounds like these two terminals were selected initially as these are spots where international and domestic passengers come together, as officials don’t want passengers arriving from overseas to sneak onto a domestic flight without paying a visit to the friendly immigration counter.

The plan is for travelers to get their faces scanned after receiving their boarding pass but before heading through the fun that is airport security. Then after they get through the metal detectors, body scanners, and everything else they’ll be scanned again before they board the airplane. If everything matches up, you’re good-to-go, but if not, well we’d rather not know what happens at that point.

The technology comes from UK-based Aurora Computer Services, and they’re boasting that they can recognize a passenger in about five seconds. That sounds pretty quick to us, but if that’s multiplied by thousands of passengers we’re just thinking that it might add to the whole airport security delay experience.

If you ever wanted to hand off boarding passes after security in hopes of illegally switching travel itineraries, the potential to do so might have just been eliminated. Sure it’s another step in the airport security process, but we still think it’s worth it to visit the UK.

[Photo: Jaunted]

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