The project “Unobtrusive Technologies for Secure and Seamless Border Crossing for Travel Facilitation” - ODYSSEUS was funded by the European Commission under Horizon programme, starting January 2023 and ending in December 2025. ODYSSEUS had the important goal to improve the process of EU border crossing for both citizens and Border Authorities, while maintaining privacy and security.
The approach of ODYSSEUS was to collect identity and other travel relevant data of people before the travel. Upon arrival at a border crossing point, the next two phases are the identity verification process of the travelers and the screening of vehicles, luggage and cargos. The results are fused in order to make the final decision about the passenger/vehicles passing the border without stopping or triggering a deeper inspection process.
The identity verification process is performed through Virtual Passport technology enabling citizens to securely manage their identity information through their smartphone in a Mobile Wallet, read by a Seamless onboarding device supported by the User Continuous Behavioral Authentication that ensures the identity checking. At arrival at a border crossing point on road, train or ship, the vehicle and the luggage or cargo are processed through Unobtrusive X-Ray scanning technology, UAV-assisted image processing, Faceless Person Counting and AI based data analytics.
At the end of its third year of implementation, the ODYSSEUS project successfully completed the main phases of development, integration and validation. The focus during this final year was on consolidating the integrated platform, validating the technological components in operational environments and finalizing the performance assessment of the overall framework.
During Year 3, the ODYSSEUS platform reached its final integrated version.
The project also finalised its pilot demonstrations across land, sea and rail border scenarios. These pilots enabled testing under realistic operational conditions and provided measurable feedback on system performance. The validation process included the assessment of technical and business KPIs, user acceptance evaluation and justification of the achieved Technology Readiness Levels. The results confirmed that the ODYSSEUS platform and its individual tools reached advanced levels of maturity and are technically ready for further exploitation and potential operational deployment.
All technological developments were aligned with the General Data Protection Regulation, AI Act and applicable legal frameworks.
In parallel with validation activities, the consortium further developed exploitation planning and sustainability strategies. Business models and market positioning approaches were refined to support continuation beyond the project’s lifetime and to prepare selected technologies for potential real-world uptake.
The project concluded its implementation phase with a final event where the main results and lessons learned were presented to stakeholders. With the completion of its third year of implementation, ODYSSEUS closes its operational phase with validated technologies, documented performance results and a structured pathway toward future development and exploitation.
