Company behind Oyster working on facial recognition ticket system
US firm Cubic Transportation Systems is working on a ticketing system that uses palm vein identification and facial recognition technology to improve the flow in public transport hubs. Cubic, the company behind London's Oyster card, said the prototype registers passengers' palms or faces in place of issuing a ticket. They would be re-scanned on exiting and checked against the system's registry. It could also be used to spot fare-dodgers, with non-paying people triggering an alert. While it aims to test the gate-less tracking system at a London station within the year, Cubic admitted the facial recognition technology wasn't yet ready.
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At the train station of the future, your face could be your ticket and gates could be invisible.

Cubic Transportation Systems, the US company behind London’s Oyster card technology, is working on new ticketing systems that use facial recognition, palm vein scanning and object tracking in a bid to cut down queues.

“The ridership on public transportation is due to grow,” says Dave Roat, strategy manager at Cubic. “How do we deal with the growth in capacity and help enable passenger flow through stations?”

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One of the problems Cubic is trying to solve is the bottleneck that occurs at ticket gates when everyone rushes to dig out their ticket or pass. To avoid this crush, Cubic suggests removing the gates completely. Instead, its prototype system uses an object tracking system to track passengers as they walk through.

The company has demonstrated a prototype of its “FasTrak” gateless gate system at its London-based innovation centre. Here’s how it works. First, the traveller presents their ticket at a next-generation validator. As with existing machines, this validator accepts Oyster cards and contactless cards, but it also works with some alternative payment methods: Bluetooth LTE (which could identify passengers by their phone as they pass through, without them needing to hold it on the scanner), palm vein scan and facial recognition.