Category: News

The CarMen consortium was invited to participate in the TESSERA Second Online Workshop, entitled “Consolidating progress: Laying the groundwork for datasets towards the European Security Data Space for Innovation.”

The workshop brought together EU-funded projects and key stakeholders from across the security domain, including representatives working in border management, fighting crime and terrorism, resilient infrastructure, and disaster-resilient societies. The agenda focused on advancing the European Security Data Space for Innovation through discussions on governance models, interoperability frameworks, dataset mapping and standardisation, as well as quality assessment and compliance mechanisms.

For CarMen, participation in this exchange was particularly relevant. The project addresses secure biometric data handling, trusted data transfer through Digital Traveller Credentials (DTC), and interoperability with operational border infrastructures – all of which depend on high-quality, reliable, and standardised datasets.

The workshop provided an important platform to contribute to ongoing discussions on dataset quality, standardisation, and data-driven innovation, ensuring that CarMen developments remain aligned with emerging European data governance frameworks. Through its engagement, the consortium continues to strengthen its role within the evolving European Security Data ecosystem and support the development of secure, interoperable solutions for next-generation border management.

CarMen partner Hochschule Darmstadt – University of Applied Sciences (H-DA) contributed to the international biometric research community through its participation in the EAB Council of Wisdom on Iris Recognition, organised by the European Association for Biometrics (EAB). Representatives of H-DA joined a distinguished panel of five international experts to discuss current and emerging challenges in iris recognition technologies. The expert session addressed key questions shaping the field in 2026 and beyond, including:

• Technological trends in iris recognition for the coming years,
• Availability and limitations of open datasets for model training,
• Advances in presentation attack detection (PAD),
• The role of synthetic data and ongoing challenges related to the domain gap.

Iris recognition represents a core component of the CarMen project’s multimodal biometric framework, which integrates face, iris, and periocular modalities to enhance robustness in non-stop border control scenarios. The discussions on presentation attack detection, dataset quality, and synthetic data directly align with CarMen’s objectives to ensure secure, reliable, and operationally viable biometric authentication in uncontrolled environments.

Contribution to scientific dialogue within the European biometric ecosystem, CarMen reinforces its commitment to research excellence, knowledge exchange, and alignment with state-of-the-art developments. Such engagement ensures that project outcomes remain at the forefront of biometric innovation while addressing practical security requirements in real-world border management contexts.

As part of CarMen’s stakeholder engagement strategy, private interviews were conducted with leaders and technical experts within the Law Enforcement Authorities (LEAs) of the countries where partners are located, to maximize the acquired information relevance, confidentiality and a project visibility among interested police and custom forces.

The discussions were designed to gather operational perspectives directly from decision-makers and frontline units, thereby aligning research developments with real-world border management needs. Key topics addressed included challenges related to on-the-move biometric acquisition, presentation attack detection (PAD), and interoperability with existing border control infrastructures. These exchanges support CarMen’s objective of developing robust and secure biometric solutions for non-stop border control in uncontrolled operational environments. Integrating feedback from national authorities, the consortium is able to refine technical specifications, strengthen compliance with legal and ethical requirements, and ensure compatibility with existing systems.

Institutional collaboration plays a crucial role in bridging research innovation with operational implementation. Through structured dialogue with public authorities, CarMen enhances its impact pathway and contributes to the development of secure, scalable, and interoperable biometric technologies aligned with European border management priorities.

We are excited to present the first official brochure of the CARMEN project, designed to provide a comprehensive overview of the project’s goals, objectives, and its innovative approach to border crossings.

What’s inside the CARMEN Project Brochure?

It provides information on:

• A new approach to border control for a mobile, digital Europe
• From static checks to “Biometrics on the Move”
• How CarMen works
• Security, ethics, and trust by design
• From research to real-world deployment
• Project objectives
• Impact for EU
• CarMen consortium.

This brochure provides an invaluable resource for all those involved in border control, and serves as a guide to how the CARMEN project will shape the future of border crossings.

Get your copy today!

Stay tuned for more updates and feel free to reach out to us for more information on how to get involved with the CARMEN project.

As the new year begins, the CarMen project continues its steady transition from concept to real-world validation. After establishing the technological and ethical foundations out, the consortium has reached an important milestone: the successful completion of its first experimental testing activities. These initial tests mark a key step toward CarMen’s vision of non-stop biometric border control operating under real operational conditions.

Their objective was to move beyond controlled laboratory environments and assess how CarMen’s biometric technologies perform in realistic border-crossing scenarios, where travellers are often in motion, environmental conditions are unpredictable, and the time available for identity verification is limited.

In line with the project’s ambition to enable “biometrics on the move,” three complementary experimental scenarios were implemented. These included pre-authentication of stationary travellers before border crossing, biometric identification of pedestrians moving continuously through corridors, and on-board verification of passengers inside buses or coaches. Each scenario reflects concrete operational practices at external EU borders and allowed the technologies to be tested under challenging conditions such as movement, variable lighting, changing camera angles, and partial occlusions.

The results of these first tests contribute directly to improving the robustness and reliability of biometric algorithms, validating the combined use of RGB and near-infrared imaging, and advancing image processing techniques for identification on the move. At the same time, the activities strongly reflect the objectives set out in the CarMen project proposal, particularly the ambition to enable seamless, non-stop biometric verification for pedestrians and vehicles without requiring travellers to stop or present physical documents.

Beyond technical performance, the experiments also support a broader reflection on the ethical, legal, and societal aspects of biometric border control. In line with the project’s design, all testing activities are carried out with a strong focus on data protection, privacy, and compliance with GDPR and European legal frameworks, reinforcing CarMen’s commitment to trustworthy and socially acceptable solutions.

As the project moves into its next phases of development and pilot demonstrations, these first experimental tests represent a decisive step from vision to implementation. CarMen continues to transform research ambitions into practical solutions that support smoother travel, enhanced border security, and a more sustainable future for European mobility.

iDAKTO is proud to announce its participation in the CarMen project, dedicated to making border crossings smoother, faster and more secure through biometrics on the move and Digital Travel Credentials (DTCs). By joining forces with 15 partners across six countries, we are helping shape the future of trusted digital identity in travel.

Tackling a growing challenge for Europe

The number of people crossing Schengen borders has been rising steadily for over a decade, driven above all by leisure travel. Building bigger airports, ports or land crossings is not only costly but also unsustainable, while longer queues would hurt the economy and frustrate both travellers and border guards. What Europe needs is a new way of crossing borders; faster, smoother, and still fully secure.

CarMen: biometrics on the move

This is the ambition behind CarMen, an EU-funded project that brings together 15 partners across six countries, including ISEN YNCREA (FR), the Home Office (UK), the French Ministry of Interior (FR), Center for Security Studies/KEMEA (GR), Hochschule Darmstadt (DE), CLR Labs (FR), Idiap Research Institute (CH), Thales (FR), Notitia (HR), CIVIPOL (FR) and Brittany Ferries (FR). CarMen will explore how to make border checks work in real life with biometrics on the move; from pedestrians to cars, coaches and trucks. It will also demonstrate the benefits of Digital Travel Credentials (DTCs) and integrate behaviour analysis to detect anomalies, ensuring that speed never comes at the expense of trust.

iDAKTO’s contribution: Enabling DTCs with iDCluster®

At iDAKTO, we are contributing as technology provider with our iDCluster® platform at the core of this effort. Fully aligned with international standards such as OpenID4VCI/OpenID4VP and ISO/IEC 18013-7, iDCluster® enables secure provisioning of DTCs into mobile applications and ensures trusted data exchanges at scale. Built on a micro-services architecture and deployable on private or public clouds, it combines flexibility with security by design, while guaranteeing GDPR compliance and giving users control over their personal data.

Impact for the industry and travellers

The impact is twofold. For the industry, CarMen offers a scalable, interoperable path to handle ever-growing traveller flows without costly infrastructure expansion, while reinforcing fraud protection. For users, it means shorter waits, a document-free journey, and the reassurance that privacy and consent are respected at every step.

Towards seamless and trusted travel

Set to run until 2027, with final trials at the port of Le Havre, CarMen will bring this new generation of border management into practice, demonstrating that smoother crossings and stronger security can go hand in hand. By joining the project, iDAKTO is making trusted digital identity the key enabler of tomorrow’s travel experience.