Improving Airport Efficiency, Security and Passenger Flow by Enhanced Passenger Monitoring

Background

Up to 5% of aircraft departure delays are caused by late passengers or late bags at the gate, and the impact of this in missed slots and subsequent costs will increase as the number of flights increases. The OpTag system will enable the immediate location of checked-in passengers who are either missing or late, and thus reduce passenger-induced delays and speed up aircraft turn around. The system could also form an essential component of Airline passenger identification and threat assessment systems through the automated identification of suspicious passenger movements or through the closer monitoring of individuals considered to pose a risk to secure operations.

Project objectives

There are three main developments required to create the OpTag system:

– A compact far-field radio frequency identification (RFID) tag and a reader capable of reading a large quantity of tags within its range without interference.

– A high-resolution, panoramic imaging system and corresponding software to follow a target and confirm the identity of the tagged individual or item. The system will be able to work over a network and allow different operators to select different views from the same camera.

– An ergonomic user interface to facilitate augmented surveillance, monitoring and targeting of individuals who may pose an economic or security risk to effective airport operations.

The security and efficiency environment of airports will also be researched so that the Optag system can be understood in context and developed to meet real requirements and with full understanding of the legal and operational factors and IP of the design.

Description of the work

In order to achieve these objectives, the work will focus on:

Tag Development:A compact, active Tag will be developed with an expected range of at least 10 metres and which will work in conjunction with new readers to provide direction and range finding.

Camera Hardware Development:A digital camera system will be developed which will consist of 8 camera sensors mounted in a ring. The outputs from the sensors will be combined and processed to provide a single 360 degree high resolution panoramic image.

Image processing Software Development:Software will be developed which will process the output from the panoramic cameras and transmit the images over a network in such a way that individual views and zooms may be selected by a remote operators.

Final Integration and Airport Trial:A man-machine interface to control the image selection will be developed and trialed along with an interface to the Tag tracking system so that an operator can track and identify a person on a monitor view. Four camera systems will be installed in a small airport so that experiments can be undertaken on the performance of the system in a real life environment.

Exploitation:covering IP management along with research into airport organisation. In addition, the legal and ethical framework of the operation of a passenger tracking system will be studied

Expected results

The conclusion of the OpTag project is to be a live trial performed in an airport with passengers or other staff carrying tags and with optag cameras and tag readers networked to process the images and provide tracking and other information to an operator.

In addition, the team will have a knowledge of the likely requirements for the system, a plan for implementation and a clear understanding of the legal and ethical factors involved in implementation.