Speaking at the Biometrics 2010 conference in London on Wednesday 20th October, Cyrille Bataller, director of the advanced technology labs with Accenture, said that biometric-driven airport gate technology is still in its infancy, with only around 1000 gates in active use worldwide.
Despite this, he said that trials of the technology at London Stansted have proven that biometric reader gates are very efficient.
"To date, however, many of the world's biometric border gates have involved business travellers, but the long-term aim is to get all travellers using this technology", he said.
This, he explained, is due to the enormous cost efficiencies that automated biometric gates generate for airports.
On the London Stansted trial, which has been running for 12 months, the airport saw half a million people using the system and 77% of users traversing the gates in under ten seconds.
With a manual border gate, Batiller says, an average of 240 passengers can be handled, compared to 360 passengers using an automated biometrics-driven gate.
But with six gates in a bank, he told his audience, it only takes 1.9 people to work on the gates, as most users go through on a self-service basis.
And with 10% of these users requiring manual intervention, that makes biometric-driven border gates 4.74 times more efficient than the manual system.
This, he says, translates to a 90% cost saving for biometrics-driven border gates when compared to people-based border controls.
"If we draw parallels with the rollout of ATMs at banks, I think you're going to see biometrics-driven gates becoming the norm", he said, adding that it is also worth noting that the manual process is less than perfect from a security point of view.