Detroit Metropolitan Airport Personalizes Air Travel With ‘Parallel Reality’

This seemingly magical version of the quintessential flight information board is made possible by “Parallel Reality,” a technology that allows several individuals to simultaneously view personalized information on a single screen. It was first introduced at CES 2020, where partners Delta Airlines and Misapplied Sciences had a single screen display 12 different things, depending on where the viewer was standing.

That’s Parallel Reality’s secret sauce: positioning. After a traveler scans their boarding pass at a kiosk, the system creates a private “viewing zone” around them, allowing the traveler to see their own flight information on screen from their position at the kiosk. As the traveler moves, a non-biometric sensor tracks their activity and shifts the personalized viewing zone accordingly to maintain visibility.

This effect is stackable, meaning more than one traveler can initiate a personalized viewing zone without the others losing sight of their on-screen information. Misapplied Sciences says its Parallel Reality Pixel is what facilitates this; rather than emitting a single color in all directions like a traditional pixel, the company’s can emit several controlled colors in different directions simultaneously. According to Misapplied Sciences, the proprietary pixels make it possible to show personalized on-screen information to more than a hundred viewers at a time.

While some might say personalized travel information could just be obtained through a website or a mobile app, let’s admit it: airlines often fail to update these in a timely manner, leaving travelers scrambling to departure boards for gate and flight delay updates. Ranjan Goswami, Delta’s senior vice president of customer experience, also defies the belief that the modern smartphone user wants everything to exist on their phone. “I think customers are eventually going to want to be able to navigate their journeys without being buried in their screens,” Goswami said in a press release. “In the future, I’d love to create an airport experience as convenient and informative as the phone in your hand.”

Parallel Reality could find its way into hospitality, entertainment, and marketing, where it might be used to display information in individuals’ native languages or advertise products unique to viewers’ interests, according to Misapplied Sciences. But for now, those interested in testing Parallel Reality will have to find it at Concourse A of DTW’s McNamara Terminal.

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