Aug. 31—NEW DELHI — Bengaluru International Airport Ltd, in partnership with homegrown computer vision firm Industry.ai and US tech firm Nvidia Corp., on Wednesday announced the integration of the former's computer vision-based artificial intelligence (AI) platform into the airport's operations. In a joint statement, the companies said the technology will be deployed at the Bengaluru airport's Terminal 2—which commences international operations from 31 August.
The video analytics and AI platform will be used by the airport to track queues at various checkpoints across the terminal, analyze and resolve congestion, and track abandoned baggage and alert security staff in case of suspicious movements. To do this, the platform will simultaneously connect to video feeds from 500 live cameras across Terminal 2, which will then be connected to Industry.ai's data analytics portal that can produce up to 12 outcomes based on the video feeds. These outcomes will include cues to identifying bottlenecks as well as safety concerns, including the overspeeding or movement of suspicious vehicles outside the airport terminal.
The vision AI platform of Industry.ai, a subsidiary of private green energy firm Bharat Light & Power, is based on Nvidia Metropolis development suite that offers companies a ready-to-use platform to build video feed-based data analytics solutions.
The service will be operated on cloud.
Tejpreet Chopra, chief executive of Industry.ai, said in a statement that the platform "will speed up passenger flow during peak hours of operation." Chopra added that the company will look to expand its service to other terminals at the airport as well. George Fanthome, chief information officer of Bengaluru International Airport Limited, affirmed that the platform was "a first" for any terminal of the airport.
However, an emailed query to Industry.ai on its deployment at the airport and future plans did not receive an answer until press time. A representative for Bengaluru Airport could not immediately respond to Mint's query, citing the commencement of international operations at Terminal 2.
The deployment at Bengaluru's new international terminal comes as the latter also became one of the first across the country to incorporate the Centre-backed facial recognition travel approval platform, DigiYatra. Built by Hyderabad-based Dataevolve Solutions and backed by the union civil aviation ministry, DigiYatra presently operates across seven airports—including Delhi, Kolkata and Bengaluru itself.
However, much like how the implementation of DigiYatra raised concerns around privacy and collection of personal data, experts said that a terminal-wide vision AI platform may also raise similar concerns.
"There will be concerns that could be raised around how such a tool would handle personal data, including how the concerned authorities would seek consent from transiting passengers for collecting and using their data. The consent mechanism, in light of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, could be important to consider," said Abhishek Malhotra, managing partner at Delhi-based TMT Law Practice.
Malhotra added that further aspects that could prove to be important include "how the data is being collected, and how it is being destroyed."
On this note, the recently notified DPDP Act could prove to be crucial in dictating the exact consequences of handling and misuse of physical and biometric data of individuals—which are classified under personal data. However, Malhotra added that the Act is yet to notify how the Data Protection Board would handle concerns in this regard.
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Updated: 31 Aug 2023, 12:33 AM IST
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