Flight Info Boards Can Now Show Your Personalized Gate Details—And No One Else’s

Rushing through an airport to get to your gate is not fun—especially when you’re scurrying to locate your details on a cluttered flight information board.

Delta Airlines and Misapplied Science have perhaps found a solution to this age-old problem with a board that shows personalized information to anyone who just simply looks at it.  

In a step towards a completely personalized flight experience, you no longer only have staff and stewards remembering your name the information boards now know them too. And it does so by scanning your face.

At any one time, the new ‘Parallel Reality’ displays can feature up to 100 different passengers’ flight departure times, gate numbers, and directions on how to get there.   

The board can display different information to each person from the pixels in its display. Millions of light rays can be projected from each pixel. The rays are software-directed to each individual.  

The system tracks the eyes of each person and broadcasts the information for their eyes only. It can continuously disclose the viewer's information even as they walk around the panel. Just as others standing around you cannot view your information, you cannot view theirs. And once you leave the area, your information will be deleted.  

Misapplied Science taps into Delta’s database of digital face IDs, which it launched last fall, and is used to check passengers into flights. As such, it knows the facial makeup of its passengers.  

The first board is being introduced at Detroit Metropolitan Airport, where passengers will have the option to take part in this experience by scanning their boarding passes at the Parallel Reality kiosk.   

The possibilities for this new technology are endless, if not a bit worrying considering rampant breaches into personal information from large-scale companies over the last few years. Still, it will be interesting to see what else these futuristic panels can be used for.   

[via TechCrunch and Euronews, cover image via Delta Airlines]