* Identity management technology could save cruise lines thousands
If you’ve ever vacationed on a cruise ship, you’re probably familiar with that area of the boat called the photo gallery. You’re also probably more familiar with the photographers than you want to be, since they seem to constantly be around ready to document every move you make in every port on the journey.
They take your picture going up the gangplank and coming down; shaking hands with the captain and dancing in the disco; snorkeling at the beach and scarfing chocolate at the midnight buffet. They are omnipresent.
Each day, more and more prints of these pictures appear in the photo gallery where you can find dazed or bemused passengers scanning the racks trying to find their images so they may purchase them for posterity. The pictures aren’t easy to find, and most end up in the trashcan.
Now identity management technology may make it easier for the passengers while saving the cruise line a lot of money. Printing pictures is not cheap (special papers and inks are required) so if you can print only those that will sell (perhaps 20% of the total pictures taken) it can amount to considerable savings.
Biometric systems vendor ImageWare Systems is currently testing a photo retrieval system with Carnival Cruise Lines, the world’s largest cruise operator. The test, aboard the Carnival Pride cruising in the Caribbean, is similar to the largely unsuccessful attempt by Tampa police to find wanted criminals at the Super Bowl a few years ago. They set up computer-operated scanning cameras at the entrances to the stadium in which the game was played. The software could, supposedly, match up records in a database of wanted criminals with the facial-scans from the cameras. No arrests were made.
ImageWare is setting up a number of kiosks in the Carnival Pride’s photo gallery based on its IWS Biometric Engine (a scalable multi-biometric engine that enables the enrollment and management of unlimited population sizes). The IWS engine, along with facial recognition and digital imaging capabilities, will enable guests to search and retrieve all keepsake photos taken of them while vacationing aboard the ship.
To access the system, a guest simply steps up to a stand-alone photo-retrieval kiosk, which will capture an image of his or her face. This image is compared, using facial recognition technology, to all faces within all photos that have been captured on the cruise. Once the search is complete, photos containing the guest, including group and individual shots, will appear on the screen and be available for review and purchase. It’s quick and easy for the guest and can save thousands of dollars for the cruise line.
The Pride, for example, carries up to 2,667 passengers on any given voyage. Most people average a couple of pictures per day, more if they are in a larger group. On a seven-day cruise that could be 35,000 pictures taken! Even if 20% are purchased, the traditional method of printing all then throwing away those not bought means 28,000 pictures would be trashed. The paper can be sold to recyclers but the cost is still enormous for an industry still trying to recover from the effects of 9/11.
It’s also possible that having people exposed to facial recognition biometrics in a “fun” atmosphere could give a well-needed boost to attempts to use the technology in many other places.
