ORLY, France — An airport in France is experimenting with “virtual” boarding agents who always smile, don’t need breaks and never go on strike.
The pilot project at Paris’ Orly airport began last month and has been met with a mix of amusement and surprise by travelers, who try to touch and speak with the lifelike video images that direct them to their boarding gate.
The images materialize seemingly out of thin air when a boarding agent — a real live human — presses a button to signal the start of boarding.
They are actually being rear-projected onto a human-shaped silhouette made of plexiglass. Three actual airport boarding agents were filmed in a studio to create the illusion, which the airport hopes will be more eye-catching and easier for passengers to understand than traditional electronic display terminals.
The Associated Press
