The Tokyo Organizing Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games and NEC Corp. showed the press Tuesday a facial recognition system to be used during the 2020 Games for identifying athletes, officials and others related to the event.
Devices using the system are scheduled to be set up in more than 40 locations, including event venues, the Athletes Village and the media center, with the aim of reinforcing security measures against possible terrorist acts.
This is the first attempt of its kind in the history of the Olympic Games.
The facial recognition system developed by NEC automatically cross-checks faces seen in cameras and information about facial photos that are registered in advance as people related to the Games hold up their ID cards at entrance gates.
Then the system instantly judges whether the person is the same as the face registered.
In a demonstration of the system, participants were able to pass through a security gate almost without changing their walking speed.
According to the organizing committee, the number of people engaging in the Tokyo Games, including athletes and the press, will be about 300,000.
In past Games, security guards have visually confirmed and identified people who entered the venues and other protected places.
"We can expect higher security levels, and smoother and more efficient entries of people [into event venues]," Tsuyoshi Iwashita, chief of the organizing committee's Security Bureau, explained, regarding the facial recognition system.
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