This summer time, TSA is including another piece of technology in an try and make crowded airport safety checkpoints even more seamless. 

The brand new gear, which is already rolling out to airports, is an up to date ID scanner fitted with a biometric digicam that makes use of facial recognition to confirm passengers’ identities. The brand new machines match vacationers’ facial scans to the photographs on their driver’s license or passport and verifies that they’re a ticketed airline passenger. 

However what actually makes the method simple is that the machines are self-service: Vacationers want to easily insert their ID into the machine and take a look at the digicam. After their id is validated, they will proceed to the safety checkpoint. The safety officer has remaining approval, however when the system works accurately, there’s little to no interplay with the TSA agent on the podium. The few moments saved for every passenger are positive so as to add as much as smoother operations at airports overwhelmed with vacationers this summer time season. (TSA Administrator David Pekoske is already predicting that the variety of vacationers this summer time can be “comfortably above” pre-pandemic figures.) 

A pilot model of the brand new system was trialed in the fall of 2020 at Ronald Reagan Washington Nationwide Airport in Washington, D.C., as a possible resolution to cut back touchpoints on the top of the pandemic. That trial was open to vacationers with TSA PreCheck who needed to volunteer; the brand new scanners are nonetheless voluntary however are accessible to everybody. Vacationers are allowed to choose out and ask the officer on the podium for a handbook id verification. 

Based on the TSA, the photographs from the facial scans are solely used to match to vacationers’ image IDs and should not saved or used for another objective. Along with driver’s licenses and passports, the machines are in a position to learn hundreds of various kinds of IDs, together with everlasting resident playing cards, U.S. visas, army widespread entry playing cards, and Global Entry playing cards.

Earlier this week, Baltimore-Washington Worldwide Airport was among the many first services within the nation to put in the brand new scanners, that are known as credential authentication know-how (CAT) in trade parlance. “This know-how is effective as a result of it enhances detection capabilities for figuring out fraudulent IDs equivalent to driver’s licenses and passports at a checkpoint and it will increase effectivity by routinely verifying a passenger’s identification,” Christopher Murgia, TSA’s federal safety director for Maryland, mentioned in a release. 

An earlier model of the scanner is already at many U.S. airports. The primary-generation CAT machines—which don’t embrace facial recognition scans—have been deployed final yr at dozens of U.S. airports and eliminated the need for passengers to scan boarding passes on the podium pre-security. In fact, vacationers ought to nonetheless deliver a boarding move to the airport to point out to airline representatives at their departure gate with the intention to board the airplane.

The TSA has invested $128 million in rolling out an preliminary batch of 1,500 of the brand new facial recognition scanners at 16 airports across the nation—however the variety of services with the brand new machines is prone to develop quickly.