[elthran]

As someone that came through London Heathrow this morning - most of the time it's because half of the gates are switched off, seemingly for no reason as far as I can tell. Combine that with the fact that US, EU and UK passports can all use these in the UK, I'm sure if i went to the "other countries" line I'd probably get through faster

[everfrustrated]

In the UK the e-gates are not automated. Your picture goes a few meters to a staffed desk who operates I think 8 gates.

It's an efficiency measure not an automation and as such is subject to the usual staffing problems.

[elthran]

Interesting - I did try to find more information about how these work, since I apparently did not understand how they function - but everything I could find mentions "facial recognition algorithm" as the mechanism for determining a person-passport match.

Examples - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPassport_gates

https://intranet.birmingham.ac.uk/student/international/news...

[dfawcus]

Ha - so akin to a Discworld camera! Pratchett would be laughing...