The Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD), the official custodian of the famous Venkateswara temple here, is exploring the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and facial recognition technology to enhance the pilgrimage experience, said an official on Thursday.
TTD executive officer (EO) J Syamala Rao said the temple body will employ these technologies to authenticate genuine pilgrims for ensuring a smooth darshan (visit to deity), prevent impersonation and fraudulent activities and ease accommodation, access control and other operations.
“TTD envisioned adopting the latest technological solutions available in the market including Artificial Intelligence to improve the overall pilgrimage,” said Rao in a press release.
As part of these futuristic initiatives, the EO said pilgrims will be provided with time slotted darshan tokens, which will capture their facial features using facial recognition technology.
On capturing a pilgrim’s image, he said it will be sieved through data from the past 30 days or about 10 lakh images to root out duplicate bookings and thereby enable servicing more number of pilgrims.
By implementing this solution, token issue and verification process becomes quick and hassle-free while impersonation and fraudulent activities can be prevented, said Rao.
AI and facial recognition technology are also contemplated to track pilgrim numbers at various locations such as queue lines, compartments and inside the Tirumala temple, among others.