A face recognition system powered by iPads lets international business travellers skip two of the three checkpoints at Eurostar’s London terminus.
Usually, when you board an international train from London to Paris, or any of the four other European cities served by Eurostar, you have to go through three separate checkpoints. But a new iPad-powered system lets people walk straight past two of them …
Eurostar
Eurostar is by far the most civilised way to travel between London and Paris, Lille, Brussels, Rotterdam, or Amsterdam.
Instead of schlepping out to an airport and playing the usual ‘hurry up and wait’ routine of getting there early enough to pass through unpredictable security queues before waiting at the gate, Eurostar terminals are right in the center of the cities they serve.
You don’t have to walk miles through an airport terminal, just take a very short stroll from terminal entrance to train, and it generally just feels like a far more relaxed travel experience.
SmartCheck iPad-powered face recognition system
Usually, you pass through three checkpoints at the London terminal. First, British passport control. Second, your ticket is checked at the gates. Third, you pass through passport control for the country to which you’re travelling (all passport checks are done before boarding, so you can just walk straight out of the station at the other end).
But TNW reports that some travellers can now skip the first two of these. Facial recognition is used to identify you, without even requiring you to pause.
The system, developed by British tech firm iProov, replaces border checks with a facial verification checkpoint that you just walk straight past.
Before travel, the passenger downloads the app, authenticates their ID, scans their face, and links their ticket. On arrival at St Pancras Station, they stroll through a dedicated lane for the tech — dubbed SmartCheck — which verifies their entry.
The system lets users skip ticket gates and manual border control in the UK. After baggage inspection and a passport check at the French border, they’re free to board the train […]
The system uses a commercial iPad. The speed and accuracy, says Forrest, derive from the processing power and face-matching algorithms that run on the device.
For now, SmartCheck is limited to journeys to Paris, and and only those travelling in Business Premier, or who have the Carte Blanche card awarded to frequent travellers. But this is just the first phase, and the plan is to extend it to other destinations, and all classes of travel.
