DETROIT – If you’ve traveled to Metro Airport recently, you may have seen a display that almost seems to take you to a parallel universe.
OK, not quite.
It’s brand new technology to help you customize your travel itinerary – no need to scan that big board trying to find your flight among hundreds of others. Delta has customized the large board just for you.
“Ohhh, that’s so cool,” said one passenger. “Oh my God! That’s awesome.”
The large archway and information desk just past the TSA gets all sorts of reactions from passengers traveling through Metro Airport.
Passengers like the Aadhi family had never seen it before and wondered what it was.
“I was a little surprised,” passenger Harshita Aadhi said. “I didn’t know exactly what I was looking for because they didn’t tell us what we were looking for and when I saw my name I thought anyone could see my information? And then I realized my sister could only see hers.
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“My first name is up there, and it says what medallion status I have, what door, how many minutes I have to walk there,” said passenger Sangeetha Aeisekaran.
With each Delta passenger crossing, the board only displays their travel itinerary.
“I see there’s nothing on the screen,” said passenger Virgil Flowers.
“But what do you see for yourself,” said a Delta information officer.
“I see there’s ‘hello Virgil’,” Flowers said. “Thank you for flying with Delta. Gate 30a. Three minute walk.
“The screen can basically direct different content to each person looking at it,” said Albert Ng, CEO of Misapplied Sciences, the company that created the technology. “Above us is a motion sensor that detects moving objects as they move, and when one of those moving objects scans their boarding pass, that’s how the screen knows direct this flight information to this moving object as it walks around.”
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The screen can display personalized flight information for up to 100 travelers at a time.
How it all works is quite simple.
All you have to do is walk into the office, scan your boarding pass and your boarding information is displayed on the big screen just for you. The underlying technology is what makes it all possible.
“It’s in the pixels of the screen itself,” Ng said. “Each pixel is able to control the color of the light it throws in many different directions. But right now I only see an empty plane because I didn’t opt in or scan my card. ‘boarding.
“You don’t see anything on the screen?
“No,” Ng said. “So if the camera can go back behind my head, you can see that I really don’t see anything.”
“Digital ID technology was first tested at Delta here in Detroit among employees,” Delta’s Hussein Berry said.
The parallel reality experiment has been underway for a few years through a partnership between Delta and Misapplied Sciences. It was just unveiled for public use for Delta travelers on June 28, and Metro Airport is the first airport in the world to use it.
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“Well, that’s helpful,” Flowers said. “Just because I’m thinking, where do I go from here? So absolutely, it’s really helpful.
The goal is to eventually extend this technology to other airports across the country and the world. Another interesting thing to note is that the table will also display in the language you prefer.
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