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Airport Using Google Glass For Security and Passenger Information

An anonymous reader notes this story about how an Amsterdam airport is putting Google Glass to use. "One of Europe's busiest airports, Amsterdam's Schiphol hub in the Netherlands, is trialling Google Glass for use by airport authority officers as a hands-free way to look up gate and airplane information. It's also testing Google's face computer on travelers passing through the terminal in a bid to better understand the 'customer journey', thanks to Glass' first person perspective....Google has pulled back on 'Glass for the masses' — at least for now. It shuttered its Glass Explorer program last month. Although far from killing off Glass, it has handed the project to Nest's Tony Fadell to oversee. Glass lives, as a standalone division within Google that's yet to prove its worth — but which Google evidently isn't willing to give up on, even though it's been forced to have a rethink about its go-to-market strategy. And, in all likelihood, the entire product proposition/design of the hardware."

36 comments

  1. A proper use for the technology... by mlts · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Now, this is something I'd assert is a proper use for Google Glass -- a way to help improve workflow. I can see this being useful not just at the airport, but for bank tellers and other retail staff. It not just is a way of presenting info, but if something bad does happen, it is a way of helping prove who did it, especially if it takes place out of the arc of the overhead CCTV cameras.

    This is a lot better use of the technology than trying to cam at the local Alamo Drafthouse.

    1. Re:A proper use for the technology... by green1 · · Score: 1

      And this is something I've always said, Google glass is not something the masses even want right now, however it would be really useful as a work tool. I can certainly see this technology being useful for nurses, paramedics, police, and many other working professionals.

      Maybe after people get used to it's abilities at work they'll find a want/need for it outside of work, but that's in the future, the workplace uses could exist right now.

    2. Re:A proper use for the technology... by pr0t0 · · Score: 2

      Google engineer: But...how can we make Glass more appealing now, as a way of sowing seeds for our next release?

      Tony Fadell: Give them to airport screeners. Everybody loves those guys! And why not? They're hip, edgy, rule-breakers!

      --
      I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
    3. Re:A proper use for the technology... by geekd · · Score: 2

      And bouncers. Facial recognition automatically identifies banned patrons. Video record proves they checked ID. Video camera verifies IDs from out of state / country.

    4. Re:A proper use for the technology... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      um... no, do you have any idea of the processing power required to run facial recognition software with any kind of real database?

      Authenting ID's is a good idea though but that would mean access to Govt held databases so won't happen, or at least not in any form thats usable at speed.

    5. Re:A proper use for the technology... by geekd · · Score: 1

      The article mentions using facial recognition, so I assumed they had something working.

      As for IDs, I just mean spotting fakes by checking the tell-tales. These days, when a bouncer gets an ID he's not familiar with, he has to pull out a book and look it up.

    6. Re:A proper use for the technology... by AK+Marc · · Score: 2

      Vegas does it on 20 year old PCs. I think you are the one that doesn't know how it works.

    7. Re:A proper use for the technology... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      What is the advantage over a camera mounted on the wall? The battery life of video recording on those things is like half an hour. "Yea man, can you pass me my 10th pair of glasses?"

    8. Re:A proper use for the technology... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What is the advantage over a camera mounted on the wall? The battery life of video recording on those things is like half an hour. "Yea man, can you pass me my 10th pair of glasses?"

      There are advantages, I'll leave that to your imagination. The technology will get better, but in the meantime, they could use an extra battery pack clipped to the waist.

    9. Re:A proper use for the technology... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      So they are using the supercomputers to play minesweeper then? The interface/terminals are 20 years old but I assure you the workload is handled by a state of the art system/s.

      example you can get a basic out the box ID system for your PC, it takes my computer (i7 16gb ram with solid state drives) about 3 minutes to ID me from a list of 100 photo's, imagine how long it would take if the list was 10 million.

      And vegas isn't a good example anyway, most of the casio's have phased out facial req because its so unreliable, you either get a huge numbers of "false alarms" or it takes so long to process the data becomes obsolete, (person leaves) against a small(ish) list its fine but not for wide scale use.

      Retinal scan identifying is much better, faster as you have a lot less variables eg, lighting conditions, makeup, clothing obscured.

      The idea that Google even the giant it is, with massive resources has a out of the box facial system ready for the retail market (businesses) is laughable.
      Facebook is the leader in picture identification at the moment and even they have nothing close to ready yet...

       

    10. Re:A proper use for the technology... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's a cloud connected device dawg. They have data centers full of NVIDIA CUDA cores happy to crunch some fischerfaces and eigenfaces.

    11. Re:A proper use for the technology... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're talking about things you don't know. Google bought TWO face recognition startups. I caught my GF cheating on me with PittPatt(built in to Picasso).

      I never would have been able to go through and sort all of her photos based on the people in the photos without it. We're talking 1000s of photos. I did it in 30 minutes with a core i5 while I was sipping on a rum and coke.

      I had EXIF data of every incriminating photo's time stamps telling me the affair continued after it had supposedly stopped.

      The technology works. Get with the times. You may be living in the past but technology isn't. Don't worry about the cheating. I'll survive.

    12. Re:A proper use for the technology... by houghi · · Score: 1

      That is the reason they need to record all our emails and phone conversations. because if something bad does happen, it is a way of helping prove who did it as we all are guilty untill proven innocent.

      --
      Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
    13. Re:A proper use for the technology... by laird · · Score: 1

      Google does all the heavy lifting on servers, for Glass and pretty much everything else that they do. The Glass just collects data and displays the results. It has barely any compute or storage, just enough to be a client to the web services, really. That's how they got it small, light, and relatively cheap (compared to previous similar devices).

      Retinal scanning is great, but the goal is to ID people from a distance, so that the observer is just wearing Glass and watching a stream of people. If they're doing a retinal scan, they can also stop people and check IDs. Besides which, of course, normal people don't have a reference retinal scan to check against.

      I agree that trying to do general population facial recognition would generate too many false positives, wasting everyone's time.

      But there's also some room for optimization to improve the odds, and to find a use case that doesn't require perfection. For example, the system can narrow matches down to people with tickets for flights in the next few hours departing from that airport, and flag anyone who doesn't match for an ID check. To be useful it wouldn't have have to be 100% accurate, or match everyone in the universe, so it's an easier computation - it's value would be in letting security filter out 80% of the people that are known OK travellers, and interview the people that are out of that profile.

  2. Re:Shuttered is a lie! by sexconker · · Score: 1

    It is being expanded and turned into its own division.

    No, it's being pinched off like a dingleberry. If it ever bears fruit because someone else takes an interest and does something with it, they'll parade it about and sing its praises as if they've always believed in it.
    All of the suckers who bought one (at ridiculous prices) have nothing to show for it and have been cut off from any and all further development / revisions.
    The only ones with access to it going forward will be Google and whatever company decides they want to pay Google $BIG_MONEY$ to get their hands on it.

  3. Time to start over by cusco · · Score: 1

    even though it's been forced to have a rethink about its go-to-market strategy

    And here is the example that every other frelling company out there needs to learn; if people don't want to use your product the way you expect them to you need to change your expectations. The classic demonstration of this is the Ford Edsel, but there is no lack of newer examples, such as why did MS go forward with Win 8 even after the test users uniformly hated the new interface? Ballmer had decided that users were going to conform to his product, with end the result that huge enterprise customers (and many of MS's internal users) refused to upgrade. Google is doing the smart thing, they've got a product that is useful in many scenarios, just not popular in the scenario they originally envisioned. They're going to work on the markets where it makes sense now, such as security, medical systems, and architectural design.

    --
    "Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
    1. Re:Time to start over by laird · · Score: 1

      Exactly! Pretty much no startup succeeded with their initial plan intact. The trick is to be agile yet decisive, which is a hard balance. You have to listen to the market and find an opportunity that "clicks", but at the same time you can't redirect every week.

      I'd say that Google realizing that consumers don't want Glass, but enterprise customers do, is a pretty reasonable redirect. For another example, look at Apple - they change their minds about things based on market demand. They thought larger phones were a terrible idea, but a few years later the marketplace made clear that larger phones were a significant chunk of the market that they couldn't ignore. Heck, iPhone started with no apps and Apple saying that everything should be web-based, and the redirect to add the App Store turned into a huge success. You can't let yourself be locked into an initial vision and pass up real opportunities in favor of imaginary ones!

  4. Cops by Tailhook · · Score: 1

    The police, or at least the people police report too, are going to love these things. The devices will replace at least three other devices, the personal radio+mic, the body camera and the in-vehicle computer console.

    I expect to see every cop in the US wearing these inside of five years. For better or worse.

    --
    Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
    1. Re:Cops by Obfuscant · · Score: 1

      I expect to see every cop in the US wearing these inside of five years. For better or worse.

      And my eyeglasses have super-bright IR LEDs embedded in them, too.

    2. Re:Cops by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That should make you easy to spot, anyhow.

    3. Re:Cops by sumdumass · · Score: 1

      Spot but dificult to phtogragh with a digital cam. It would likely kill any chance of face recognition.

  5. This would be fun to hack by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 1

    Not that hard either, just use the NSA backdoors in the protocol and hijack the streams

    Then their GGs would show a nice little old lady going thru security instead of the actual person.

    Or maybe show they have credentials for pass thru.

    For every solution, their is a workaround.

    --
    -- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
    1. Re:This would be fun to hack by AK+Marc · · Score: 1

      Then their GGs would show a nice little old lady going thru security instead of the actual person.

      GG isn't AR. You could pull that trick with the MS holo glasses, but not GG. At best you could hack the "terrorist warning" to "VIP priority" when the back-end identifies the terrorist.

    2. Re:This would be fun to hack by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 1

      Depends on the feed protocols. Would be far easier to change the text and color displays, and have the headset send back an "override: incorrect identification" message back to the system. This "clears" the subject long enough for them to proceed and confuses, due to high levels of mismatch. Any system without such overrides would be non-functional, due to real world constraints.

      Basic application of social engineering - find the most common override that shuts or delays the security and use that. Don't upgrade from BAD GUY to VIP, upgrade from BAD GUY to NORMAL or from NORMAL to VIP. Play the numbers.

      (caveat: none of this will impact real world risks, which are already set up for failure)

      --
      -- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
  6. Hilariously, Hololens looks more meaningful by drinkypoo · · Score: 0

    All the complaints about how hololens isn't holographic and just has a holographic prism or whatever aside, it seems like it's actually more like the thing I want. And I only want to use it when I'm driving, really. No real privacy implications there, nobody seems to be railing against dashcams.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  7. Re:Shuttered is a lie! by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

    The only ones with access to it going forward will be Google and whatever company decides they want to pay Google $BIG_MONEY$ to get their hands on it.

    And just like Dean Kamen's "it", anyone who knocks one off in their garage for peanuts. And also just like that particular "it", it's not changing the world because it's not new, just a refinement of things which already existed and which anyone could have told you wouldn't change the world if refined a bit.

    Wearable computers with cameras and HUDs (however primitive) were around before Glass, Hololens and others are coming, and there will be more in the future. They're inevitable now that they're cost-effective to implement. No big deal if people can't get their hands on this particular example. Anyone who spent money they couldn't afford to throw away on a program that was clearly in deep, deep alpha is an idiotic tool. People who spent throwaway money on Glass and played with it are also mostly tools, but at least some of them knew what they were doing.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  8. Google Glass and Alzheimer's by al0ha · · Score: 1

    Personally I am hoping Google Glass comes into fruition as a publicly available and useful tool, as one of it's greatest potentials may be the ability to help those with Alzheimer's and other forms of progressive dementia live a somewhat normal and independent life. I imagine a future where all the Alzheimer's patient needs to remember is to put on their Google Glass in the morning. Google Glass will remind them of the names of everyone they know, perhaps even remind them of their past conversations among other things, when to take their medication, what is on their calendar for that day, and how to get home after they've gone for a walk.

    Google Glass and self driving cars could be the saviors of the elderly and the young alike, keeping the elderly independent far longer than is feasible today thus keeping them from being a burden on the younger generations at the same time.

    --
    Did you ever wake up in the morning, with a Zombie Woof behind your eyes? -- FZ
  9. So... by Greyfox · · Score: 1

    If the goatse guy goes through customs, does he get a huge picture of that on his google glass?

    --

    I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?

  10. Glass is easy! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I can set up a less conspicuous custom-made augmented reality device of my own. Piece of cake. Cant understand all the fuzz.

  11. Better hack by SuperKendall · · Score: 1

    If all of the airport personnel are wearing Glass (or something like it) you could have a real life Metal Gear Solid kind of "zone of vision" for all the airport security. Makes getting that bottle of water through security a lot easier.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:Better hack by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 2

      Fairly easy to do that already, though. Problem is people try to take the whole bottle in one unit, which shows up as a vacuum area on the scans. If you switch to flat or tubular bladders, you can use shoes or purse handles or briefcase handles or backpack parts to move the same amount of liquid.

      --
      -- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
  12. We're not that far away already... watch this! by hacker · · Score: 1

    From Black Mirror, a great series on Netflix and also in-full on YouTube:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

  13. Very creative marketing Google... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See subject: IF Google's the one that pitched this to the 'airport security crowd' (& the airport security contractors etc. didn't think of it themselves that is) then, YES, they're smart/good marketers!

    I feel it was very intelligent of them to open up a new market & way of applying Google Glasses!

    "NOT too shabby!"

    * NOW - if they're smart, & generally they are I suppose, then law enforcement as a WHOLE represents a new sector of buyers too!

    APK

    P.S.=> "Glassholes are *EVERYWHERE*...", law enforcement included... apk