By Peter Hawkins
SmartGate Airport
THIS is SmartGate, the high-tech express passport system that allows travellers to process themselves through passport control.
Since it began operating in July, about 112,000 travellers have used the digital face-recognition technology at Sydney Airport's international terminal.
Located in the passport control area, small SmartGate computer kiosks allow passengers to insert their ePassport and answer declaration questions using a touch screen. The computer also examines other security features on the passport, including visa stamps and immigration details.
It then issues a ticket, which the traveller takes to the SmartGate exit where their face is scanned by a camera ensuring it matches the passport photo. If there is a positive match, the ticket is then reissued, the gate opens and the passenger goes through to collect luggage and hand in the ticket and incoming passenger card at the immigration desk.
"SmartGate uses face-recognition technology to confirm the traveller's identity using the digitised image of the traveller stored in the ePassport," said a spokesman for Home Affairs Minister Brendan O'Connor.
It was introduced after a three-year trial at Sydney and Melbourne airports. SmartGate is available only to Australian and New Zealand citizens aged 18 and over with ePassports, but will eventually be available to citizens of other nationalities.
An Australian Customs and Border Protection Service spokeswoman said about 30 per cent of ePassport travellers use the six gates and 12 kiosks available at Sydney Airport.
She said the system also allows travellers to move through passport control faster.
"SmartGate has been developed to help process the increasing number of international arrivals … while maintaining existing standards of border protection," she said. "While [it] was not designed to facilitate quicker processing, it does provide more processing points, allowing the processing of more travellers within the same floor space."
A professor of anatomy at Adelaide University, Maciej Henneberg, said in most cases SmartGate was more effective than a Customs or border protection officer.
"Biometric [facial-recognition systems] are nearly as good as fingerprints. They measure distances between points on the face, usually the eyes, mouth and nose, and the proportion of those measurements is unique for each human," he said.
But the professor said there will always be a need for immigration officers to identify travellers whose appearances have changed. "It's unlikely that SmartGate will let in the incorrect person … But you still have to have an immigration officer in a rare case when the calculations are not accurate or something has happened to [the person's face]," he said.
HOW IT WORKS
SmartGate gives travellers the option to self-process through passport control.
It uses facial-recognition technology to compare data in an ePassport with a photo taken by a camera at the airport.
Locate the SmartGate kiosk.
Place your ePassport into the reader.
Answer declarations using the touch screen.
Kiosk issues a SmartGate ticket.
Insert SmartGate ticket.
Look at the camera. Your face is compared with your ePassport photo.
Retrieve ticket.
When gates open, proceed to baggage hall.
FACE RECOGNITION TECHNOLOGY
1 Biometric technology is used to map the underlying structure of each face.
It measures the distances between points in the face, usually the eyes, mouth and nose.
2 The proportions are then compared with measurements on file (in this case, the ePassport)
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