Dubai.
It’s the land of stupidly tall buildings, scorching hot weather and all things extra.
just your average monday morning in abu dhabi
The United Arab Emirates city is constantly upping their tech and luxury game, doing things like creating 24-karat gold bed sheets, building $854M luxury hotels that are a floating replica of Venice and being home to 15-year-olds who buy the world’s first Louis Vuitton X Supreme Ferrari.
Now, they’re adding their flourish for all things opulent to their aviation game.
Dubai International Airport is doing away with security counters in 2018 and are instead introducing virtual fish (that isn’t a typo) to identify passengers.
please be ben stiller
Instead of waiting in boring lines for security kiosks or e-gates, commuters will walk through a virtual aquarium tunnel with 80 in-built face-scanning cameras. The fish will be swimming around fancy free in an attempt to grab passengers’ attention, and thus compute their biometrics in record time.
Check out the highly Sims-like simulation here:
قريبا في #دبي.. ممر ذكي لإنهاء إجراءات السفر في المطارات في 10 ثوان فقط #أسبوع_جيتكس_للتقنية #البيان @GDRFADUBAI @GITEXTechWeek pic.twitter.com/c9cGB1OA76
— صحيفة البيان (@AlBayanNews) October 9, 2017
“The fish is a sort of entertainment and something new for the traveller but, at the end of the day, it attracts the vision of the travellers to different corners in the tunnel for the cameras to capture his/her face print,” Foreign affairs chief Major Gen Obaid Al Hameeri told The National.
Sea change at Dubai airport security as virtual aquarium tunnel replaces counter and queues https://t.co/X778PCaD1z pic.twitter.com/fxxRu7A5lK
— The National (@TheNationalNews) October 8, 2017
At the end of the tunnel, the biometrics will be matched to the passenger’s digital profile and they’ll either cop a green light reading “have a nice trip” or a red alert if a security officer needs to double check them.
Better yet, the screens can be changed from “aquarium mode” to show other themed scenes, or even adverts. Ca ching.
The whole process cuts a heck tonne of time out of the screening process, which is important since more than 80 million people pass through Dubai airport every year. It’s currently the world’s busiest airport in terms of international passenger traffic, and this traffic is set to hit the 124 million mark by 2020.
And there’s nothing fishy about a quick as possible trip through airport security.
