Programme Type: SIXTH FRAMEWORK PROGRAMME
Programme Acronym: FP6-IST
Contract Type: SPECIFIC TARGETED RESEARCH PROJECT
Contract No: AST3-CT-2004-502858
Start Date: 2004-03-22
End Date: 2007-02-01
Project Status: completed
Budget for TUC: N/A
Role for TUC: contractor
Principal Investigator for TUC: Euripides G.Μ. Petrakis

This project aims to harness emerging passenger tracking and identification technologies with the objectives of increasing the safety of air travel whilst maximising the utilisation of existing facilities. Up to 5% of aircraft late passengers or bags at a gate cause departure delays. This system will deliver better knowledge of the movements of passengers. It is designed to enable the location of checked in passengers who are either missing or late, and thus reduce passenger-induced delays and speed up aircraft turn around. The proposed system could form an essential component of Airline passenger identification and threat assessment systems through the automated identification of suspicious passenger movements or through the closer monitoring of individuals considered to pose a risk to secure operations. The project aims to deploy networks of enhanced Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) systems coupled to local, direction based, and passenger tracking systems using 'far-field' Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags. The system aims to facilitate real-time location of individual passengers within the airport, the analysis of both mass traffic & individual behaviours, and, where appropriate, the semi-automatic control of CCTV based vision systems to observe and record suspicious or unauthorised activity. Three developments are required to implement the system,

1. A compact, low cost transponder carried by every passenger.
2. A compact, high resolution, panoramic imaging system together with software to follow a target and confirm the identity of the tagged individual.
3. An ergonomic user interface to facilitate augmented surveillance. The use of two complementary yet independent systems (one RFID based, one vision based) is intended to ensure an appropriate balance of active and passive tracking, to enable an operator to track a passenger throughout the facility and to maximise security of the system.

Funding Agency: IST STREP, FP-6.

Role: Software integration, camera intelligence

Participants: Innovision Research & Technology plc UK, 2-University College London UK, 3-Longdin & Browning UK,4-Photonic Science France,Technical University of Crete Greece, Grenoble Airport France

Co-Principal Investigator for TUC: Euripides G.M. Petrakis

Official Project Web Site: http://www.optag-consortium.com/