DigiYatra – GOVERNMENT SCHEME
News: DigiYatra:
These airports in India now have facial recognition technology. How does it
work?
What's in the news?
● The
government has introduced paperless entry at select airports to make air travel
hassle-free.
● Under
this initiative, airports will use a facial
recognition software called ‘DigiYatra’ for entry. This means, passengers
won’t need to carry their ID card and boarding pass.
Key takeaways:
● In
the first phase, the initiative will be launched at seven airports, starting
with three - Delhi, Bengaluru, and
Varanasi, followed by four airports namely Hyderabad, Kolkata, Pune, and Vijayawada by March 2023.
● Subsequently,
the technology will be implemented across the country.
What is DigiYatra?
● DigiYatra
envisages that travelers pass through various checkpoints at the airport
through paperless and contactless processing, using facial features to
establish their identity, which would be linked to the boarding pass.
● With
this technology, the entry of passengers
would be automatically processed based on the facial recognition system at all
checkpoints - including entry into the airport, security check areas,
aircraft boarding, etc.
Implementation:
● The
project is being implemented by the DigiYatra
Foundation - a joint-venture company whose shareholders are the Airports
Authority of India (26% stake) and Bengaluru Airport, Delhi Airport, Hyderabad
Airport, Mumbai Airport and Cochin International Airport.
● These
five shareholders equally hold the remaining 74% of the shares.
Which airports/airlines offer facial recognition
technology?
● The
facility will be available for passengers taking domestic flights at Delhi’s
Terminal 3, Bengaluru and Varanasi airports.
● DigiYatra
will be launched at four more airports such as Hyderabad, Pune, Vijayawada and
Kolkata by next March. Later, DigiYatra will be rapidly rolled out across all
other airports.
● Among
airlines, passengers traveling Air
India, Vistara and IndiGo on their domestic network can avail this facility
at the three airports. SpiceJet, GoFirst and Akasa Air are yet to offer the
DigiYatra facility.
Go back to basics:
● Then,
a new image of an unidentified person - often taken from CCTV footage - is
compared to the existing database to find a match and identify the person.
● The
artificial intelligence technology used for pattern-finding and matching is
called “neural networks”.
● On
July 1, the Ministry of Civil Aviation’s “DigiYatra” using facial recognition
for airport entry was tried in the Hyderabad airport.
● Facial
recognition technology is beneficial as it makes flying more convenient and reduces congestion at airports. The
facial recognition system at various airports across the globe, including
Dubai, Singapore, Atlanta and Narita (Japan), have helped bring in efficiency.