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"Intelligent" Avatars Poised To Manage Airline Check-In

Posted by samzenpus on from the even-better-than-the-real-thing dept.

An anonymous reader writes One of the developers behind special effects used in the film Avatar has inked a deal with airline check-in kiosk manufacturer BCS to implement avatars for personalized and interactive customer service. Dr Mark Sagar's Limbic IO is applying 'neurobehavioral animation' combining biologically based models of faces and neural systems to create live, naturally intelligent, and expressive interactive systems. "One of the comments levelled at self-service check in is that it has lost the human touch that people had when checking in at a traditional manned counter," Patrick Teo, BCS CEO says. "Travelling can be stressful and our aim is to make the interaction between human (passenger) and computer (check-in) as natural and helpful as possible."

25 of 102 comments (clear)

  1. nice job by alphatel · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yes we all want interactive terminals at the airport. We are not at all concerned about waiting 1 hour to checks bags, another hour to get through security and a third useful hour spent waiting to board. No, let's get hyper-aggressive about how the computer looks at the airport.

    --
    When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
    1. Re:nice job by Albanach · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I don't think the OPs point was that the waits for check in and security are such that the miracle that is manned flight has been wasted upon us. Rather that if we are going to spend money (and yes any cost comes from tickets, so it's a collective we that will pay for this) perhaps there are other parts of the airport experience that would deliver a better return.

      Frankly when I have been able to use automated check in, the existing terminals have been pretty clear and efficient. They're certainly not the most stressful part of the flying experience.

    2. Re:nice job by cheesybagel · · Score: 2

      Clippy check-in:
      I see you have some bags. Would you like to hear about our wonderful in flight services?

    3. Re:nice job by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Aside from all that, it isn't clear why adding a shallow emulation of a talking human head is even going to improve the terminal experience:

      If you are dealing with a routine matter, you aren't really trying to convey that much data (and none of the data you are trying to convey are subtly emotionally nuanced or anything, it's basically an "I want to be on this flight, ideally in this seat, here's the billing info" operation, not a sonnet) and existing text and graphic based interfaces, while often questionably thought out, are at least as competent as a natural-language dialog for anyone who isn't illiterate or otherwise handicapped.

      If something or someone is fucked up and/or deeply confused, the computer won't be able to help you because it will just format and present the garbage you are trying to sort out. You need someone who can understand an edge case or error and has the power to give a good hard shove to whatever fields aren't cooperating.

      I'd bet nontrivial money that the effect of this 'advance' will be to make the experience worse: The licensing fees will be calibrated to be lower than human salaries; but the underlying system will still be far dumber and less flexible than the humans who it will replace (because why do we need so many desk staff now that our kiosks are so user friendly!?); so users whose problems were already solved will have, at best, a slightly more pleasant interaction, and the users with real problems will have to wait in a longer line for a more harried human to fix it.

      We all know how totally peachy-keen 'interactive voice recognition' systems have made interacting with call centers, and this is basically the same old shit with an animated face.

    4. Re:nice job by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The trouble with progress as a cure for stress is twofold:

      One, expectations tend to grow as fast, sometimes faster, than capabilities. Unless you are traveling without any connecting flights and on a very leisurely schedule, everyone's assumptions about where you'll be and when will be calibrated to 'your flight; but on time', so delays that would have faded into the noise historically will now throw you off.

      Perhaps more fundamentally it appears to be the powerlessness rather than the absolute time that stresses people out, and being at the mercy of complex systems run by other people is beautifully designed to rub your face in powerlessness. Technology has, of course, increased our absolute level of power by chiseling away at the domain of 'nope, go try placating the spirits or something'; but all those places where it used to be that nobody had any control, now somebody; but not you, has control and you can't quite shake the impression that they are jerking you around.

    5. Re:nice job by TheRaven64 · · Score: 2
      In general, I'd much rather use the kiosks (or, ideally, check in using the web or a mobile app) than go to a human check-in desk precisely because it presents the information more efficiently and it's a lot faster than a face-to-face interaction would be. The only time I prefer to go to the human-behind-a-desk lines are when I'm doing something unusual (e.g. my flight's delayed enough that I'll miss my connection and I need re-routing[1]) and I need an actual brain on the other side of the conversation (contrary to popular belief, I've found the people at the desks to be very helpful - and quite creative - in this regard). For anything purely routine, don't pretend to be a human, just give me an efficient interface.

      [1] Actually, given that this has happened on about 70% of my trips to the USA over the last couple of years, I can't really justify calling it unusual.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    6. Re:nice job by cptdondo · · Score: 2

      You clearly have not been through some of the airports that I have. It's not the wait; it's the incredibly rude and arrogant staff. I've been yelled at by someone with a bullhorn, had my passport thrown at me, been told to "step aside" when my flight was cancelled and I need to reroute.... I could go on and on.

      A nice avatar isn't going to help any of that, unless it means getting rid of the worst offenders that I've run into.

      Some airlines (not all, but certainly some) could take that money and use it to train their ground staff in basic customer service; that would provide much better return than a bobbing head on a screen.

      That being said, some airlines, and some specific people at these airlines, are shining examples of customer service and dedication, and by and large have saved my trips time and time again.

  2. There's something touching about that comment by astralagos · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "One of the comments levelled at self-service check in is that it has lost the human touch..." the solution of hiring more people will, of course, not be considered.

    1. Re:There's something touching about that comment by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 2

      the solution of hiring more people will, of course, not be considered.

      Nor should it be. The number of people that really care about a check-in terminal having a "human touch" is probably about 2%. The number willing to pay extra to have their ticket issued by a human is likely closer to 0%. Any airline hiring extra humans to deal with this will just lose business to their lower cost competitors.

    2. Re:There's something touching about that comment by roman_mir · · Score: 2

      But you will get all the claims that minimum wage laws, labour laws, inflation (money printing) and basically rising prices somehow increase economic activity rather than putting more pressure on business to automate (use capital where labour was used initially).

      --
      You can't handle the truth.
    3. Re:There's something touching about that comment by hey! · · Score: 2

      It's not the human *touch* that people crave in a complicated interaction with a system. It's human *versatility*.

      Thus more personnel does no good, if those personnel are rigidly controlled, lack information to advise or authority to act. The fact that they're also expected to be jolly and upbeat as they follow their rigid and unyielding rules only turns the interaction with them into a travesty of a social interaction.

      What would work better is a well-designed check-in system that handles routine situations nearly all the time, along with a few personnel who have the training and authority to solve any passenger problems that come up.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
  3. Sigh. by ledow · · Score: 4, Interesting

    "One of the comments levelled at self-service check in is that it has lost the human touch that people had when checking in at a traditional manned counter,"

    So we're going to take away the last humans and replace them with mindless robots.

    Well done.

    Certainly aced that one.

    (As an aside, I've just come through London Stansted including an extra hour in the security queues which went all the way back to the gate when you come off the plane, and I spent much of it yelling and attracting the attention of people around me - my primary beef was that the humans had no humanity, nobody had bothered to go down the line, tell us what we were waiting for, how long it was expected to take, what they could do for special cases - young children, disabled passengers, elderly passengers unable to stand in queue, etc. - or would even bother to do anything to help or give answers.

    And when we got to the front, all the "electronic passport" aisles were gone and only the manned aisles were left. I know why they were removed - nobody uses them. They are too much a faff, you can't take children through them, if you're travelling with someone with a non-chipped passport, you have to separate and then wait (hope) blindly for each other on the other side, etc. so even when they were opened, less than 1% of the people there ever used them.

    Sorry, if you want the human touch, you have to put humans in there AND then listen to the humans queuing alongside them AND then let those humans sort each other's problems out. Reliance on machines? When I got to the long-stay car park to retrieve my car, it wouldn't let my (immaculately preserved) ticket through two different barriers, so I had to press the button and get someone to let me out, costing me another 10 minutes. Thank god that wasn't my passport at the end of a hour-long queue.

    1. Re:Sigh. by hawguy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "One of the comments levelled at self-service check in is that it has lost the human touch that people had when checking in at a traditional manned counter,"

      So we're going to take away the last humans and replace them with mindless robots.

      It's a self-service check-in, it's already a mindless robot.

      Though I fail to see how replacing the dumb kiosk with a more intelligent avatar will really make anything better, I don't really want the kiosk to ask me how my day is going, or tell me I better bundle up because it's going to be a cold day in Chicago, I just want to check in as quickly and easily as possible.

    2. Re:Sigh. by unrtst · · Score: 5, Interesting

      It's a self-service check-in, it's already a mindless robot.

      Though I fail to see how replacing the dumb kiosk with a more intelligent avatar will really make anything better, I don't really want the kiosk to ask me how my day is going, or tell me I better bundle up because it's going to be a cold day in Chicago, I just want to check in as quickly and easily as possible.

      This.

      Using some supposedly intelligent avatar instead of a clear, simple, and well designed UI ranks right up there with the automated call interfaces that ask you to speak your answers instead of pressing the number buttons on your phone. People complained because pushing numbers sucked; RCA was incorrect; we ended up with a system 10x's as frustrating that takes 3x's longer to operate.

      I've found the self-service check-in's to be rather good, but the physical integration of them has left a lot to be desired. IE. there is no line for them.. there's just a bunch of them scattered about. Then you still have to take your bags somewhere, and figuring out where that line is, and how it differs from the line that includes getting your ticket, is often a complete mess. You often have to wade back through all the folks wandering around the kiosks to find the front of the new line. It should be a LOT simpler and organized much better... though I'm sure this is a per-airport, and possibly per-airline, issue, so YMMV.

    3. Re:Sigh. by chad_r · · Score: 2

      That sums up my impression of the state of airports that have adopted the machines wholesale. The machines are just scattered around, and there is no clear "line" to either check your bags or speak to a human. You just need to trace the ropes to find a gap, and hope that the line you started is the place where the lone counter person is looking for the next person to serve. If it's especially busy, there may be two people at the counter, but anyone else on staff will be wandering around to help people with machines (basically just pushing the buttons for them) or actively discouraging people from waiting on line instead of starting with the machines.

      But the machines aren't flawless. I've never been able to get through the check-in for an international flight with an entire family. I make it through the initial steps of identifying myself and the flight, but when it comes to scanning the passports it will randomly reject one of them. It's likely because one of the family has a foreign passport. If that's the issue, why can't they just tell those cases to go directly to the counter? Three attempts at this is 10 minutes wasted (including for the staff watching over my shoulder telling me to try it again) that I could have spent waiting in line.

      The problem isn't with the software, it's with a lack of care for the customer experience. It's as if the airline management never use an airport to realize ways in which the system is inefficient, confusing, or unpleasant. That's what think is the real reason for designing an avatar kiosk: throw money at software developers to magically solve the problem instead of understanding or addressing the real issues.

  4. The human touch by overshoot · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Thanks to a prosthetic knee, I get the "human touch" every time I fly. That's after a trip through the pornscanner and taking out all of my electronics and startingt them up, of course.

    As for the kiosks -- if you know what you're doing, the last thing that you need is the kind of condescending "help" that gets in the way of getting your freaking boarding pass.

    --
    Lacking <sarcasm> tags, /. substitutes moderation as "Troll."
  5. SOlution looking for a problem by sinij · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Lining up to get sexually assaulted, lining up to pay predatory fees, and then suffering many hours on a dirty plane in sardines-in-a-box seating plan are main concerns.

    If the problems above solved, I would gladly register using CLI, if necessary.

  6. AI just isn't up to it yet, by Iamthecheese · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Natural communication? In a crowded airport with a machine? Pull the other one, it squeaks.

    Artificial intelligence is nowhere near good enough to translate "I want an isle seat for my son and TIMMY STOP POKING YOUR SISTER, sorry, An isle seat for my son and I have a Delta flight from Dallas, can you make sure it will arrive in time to connect?" That's the kind of thing human attendants can cope with easily. The best kind of interface for ticketing is an unintelligent wizard on a touch screen with big icons and a "help" button for an attendant.

    --
    If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
  7. lost the human touch? by shadowrat · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The human is the weak link in the check in chain. The self check in terminals are fine, but fat lot of good it does when i still have to stand in a huge line just to have the human behind the desk put a sticker on my checked baggage. WTF is that about? weighing? certainly a scale could be present at the terminal, and until computer vision is reliable enough, a human could simply watch to make sure people arent just pretending to weigh their 80lbs luggage. Bombs? i thought that's what the TSA is for. Clearly the staff checking your ID is not the biggest stopgap in preventing bombs on board. Why can't the terminal simply spit out my baggage sticker for myself to put on?

  8. Flight to Uncanny Valley departing from terminal 1 by abies · · Score: 2

    I think that going through tree of discrete selections has a better solution in touchscreen than in glorified answer-phone system with space-wasting avatar visualisation.
    Maybe they could prototype it first by putting terminals videoconferencing to live people which could not fully understand what you are telling them (certain offshore locations come into mind) and see how much it improves the passenger checkin quality. If it works perfectly, THEN they can solve problem of video lines by generating almost-human computer avatars. I have a feeling that people will prefer impersonal selections to videoconference...

  9. Recent experience by tomhath · · Score: 2

    A few minutes waiting for a kiosk to be available, couple of more minutes tapping the screen. Had the boarding pass and baggage claim ticket in hand. Then waited at least 15 minutes for a person to wander by and take the bag I had checked (for a $25 surcharge). Maybe the avatar will recognize the annoyance building and ping someone to come over.

  10. Clippy for checkin terminals? by Stewie241 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So is this basically clippy for checkin terminals?

  11. TYFSOK by Bob9113 · · Score: 2

    "Travelling can be stressful and our aim is to make the interaction between human (passenger) and computer (check-in) as natural and helpful as possible."

    Remember those stickers on the registers at K-Mart, facing the cashier, with the letters, "TYFSOK"? It stands for, "Thank You For Shopping Our K-Mart." The sticker was to remind the beleagured minimum wage employee to recite the words. Did anyone, ever, feel that the person mechanically parroting that catch phrase actually cared? How about the greeters at Wal Mart? (I think they've pretty much gone away, like the TYFSOK stickers)

    You can teach an automaton to mimick human emotion, but even when it is an actual human such mimickry is patronizing and irritating. If you want human warmth, hire warm humans (downside; warm humans who can keep their positive mental attitude while working at an airport are expensive and they need time to recover from their shifts).

    If you are going to use computers, embrace their natural advantages. Computers are fast, predictable, and emotionless. Those can be good characteristics in a user interface -- particularly when the customer just wants to get the process finished and move on. Work with the entire industry to develop a standard interface and sequence so the user and bang through it without even engaging their brain -- everyone is better off with travellers on autopilot. Painting a computer in whore's makeup won't make it a lover for any but the most desperate.

    And, for you air travellers, a quick question: Why are you still endorsing them? Why are you still agreeing to be subjected to the TSA and the awful customer service of the airlines? Have you really made all reasonable efforts to switch to alternatives? If you aren't making significant personal sacrifices to cut their cashflow, you are lending aid and comfort to the enemy. I've driven 6,000 miles in the past year avoiding air travel. What are you doing?

    --
    Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
  12. no thanks by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 2

    I don't fly anymore, because I don't enjoy voluntary root canals, but ...

    I went through an automated car wash recently, and instead of pushing a few buttons and swiping my card, I got to listen to a video of a cheerful smiling woman in a car (with her adorable "daughter" beside her!) explaining each step in painful marketese ... every time I did anything, she started over, talking (obliquely, tediously) about the new step I was on ... by the time I could actually drive into the car wash I was ready to rip out the screen and beat myself over the head with it.

    If you are going to automate, then at least make it quick and efficient. If you want the human touch, use actual humans. (Well, just not that actual human, please.)

  13. Human touch? by PPH · · Score: 2

    Check in kiosks are fine the way they are. If you want a human touch, just wait for the TSA security line. Of course, it will involve a Latex glove.

    --
    Have gnu, will travel.