Yitu and SenseTime are preparing bids to provide facial recognition to Beijing’s new $12 billion airport, South China Morning Post reports.

 

The new airport is located about 50 kilometers south of central Beijing, and is designed to handle up to 100 million passengers a year at full capacity. To help handle that volume, facial recognition will be applied to security and immigration screening. Authorities will match travelers to the national ID database, and will also use computer vision to identify unattended baggage and match it to travelers. The new airport’s Chief Engineer Guo Yanchi told China Newsweek in March that the new airport is “built for the future” with digital technology and “smart concepts.”

 

SenseTime is currently testing similar technology on a limited basis at the currently operating Beijing airport, anonymous sources told the Post. It has also deployed facial recognition technology to airports in Chengdu and Haikou, and more than 30 train stations in China. The company has raised some $1.6 billion, and is reportedly the world’s largest AI unicorn.

 

A representative of Yitu told the Post that it has also tested its facial recognition technology at Beijing’s existing airport, and it recently placed first in NIST vendor accuracy testing. The company recently announced it has picked up $100 million in a C+ funding round.

 

Airport IT spending is expected to reach $4.63 billion by 2023, as biometrics and other technologies are deployed to meet a coming capacity crunch. WTTC President and CEO Gloria Guevara recently told Biometric Update that the travel industry is working toward harmonizing traveler identity with biometrics to maximize the capacity of existing infrastructure.