If you’ve taken a family vacation or a business trip recently, you’ve certainly noticed the proliferation of self-service kiosks along your journey. From air travel to car rentals, right on up to checking into your hotel, many travelers may not even need to interact with an actual human being. With our ever increasingly complex lives and busy schedules, our time is of the premium. The typical traveler faces hours of waiting time in airport check-in and security lines, car rental lines, and at hotel front desks, but at the cost of what? Hopefully not vacation time Р at least that’s the goal of several emerging travel technology companies introducing self-service kiosks throughout the travel industry, specifically designed for the ease and convenience of time-conscious travelers. Especially in Hawaii, where tourism reigns supreme, travelers are not only willing, but growing to expect, self-service kiosks that minimize time spent in long lines and maximize vacation time.

Most major airlines have offered their passengers the option of using self-serve kiosks to check-in and print boarding passes at the airport for quite a few years now. More recently, several airports have begun offering travelers options for even more expeditious travel through the world’s airports. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has recently introduced a security self check-in service, utilizing emerging biometric technology as its foundation.

The Registered Traveler (RT) program is designed to expedite security screening for passengers who volunteer to undergo a TSA-conducted security threat assessment in order to confirm that they do not pose, or are not suspected of posing, a threat to transportation or national security. The screening involves checking each applicant’s identity against TSA’s terrorist-related, law enforcement, and immigration databases.

The security threat assessment is conducted through the use of biometric technology, which measures individuals’ unique physical characteristics to recognize or authenticate their identity. Common physical biometrics include fingerprints; hand or palm geometry; and retina, iris, or facial characteristics. Currently, the RT program utilizes iris images and fingerprints to verify the identification of individuals who have been approved by TSA to participate in the program.

Biometric fingerprint scanners measure the unique markings on a person’s fingertip, which are then characterized and produced as a one-of-a-kind template. The computer system does not store the fingerprint itself. Rather, a template of the fingerprint, which describes some of the key features and their locations of the fingerprint, is stored. This method ensures that the image cannot be synthesized from the template data, thereby reducing the risk of a security breach.

Biometric iris technology uses a minimally invasive camera, similar to a home video camcorder, to capture an image of the iris that is then processed by a computer that creates a one-of-a-kind template for each individual. Like fingerprints, no two irises are alike. When the individual checks-in under the RT program, the computer cross-references the individual’s iris scan with the previously stored iris template. Iris recognition is seen as having the highest accuracy of all biometric technologies and experts believe that this will be the variety that emerges as the frontrunner in RT programs around the world.