Well, not holograms per se, but it’s the buzzword being bandied about by every media outlet discussing the innovation so it’s in the title here. The actual technology rolled out at London Luton Airport is a sort of back-projection onto a translucent surface, providing a free-standing appearance of a 3D image. In this case, a life-sized person’s image replete with a speaker to deliver speech, they are technically referred to as “tensator virtual assistants.”

No wonder everyone wants to call them holograms.

There’s an article on them currently over at the BBC, but like most coverage, it’s still a bit scant on details (especially technical details),

The holograms will initially be used in the airport’s security search area to communicate important security messages as passengers pass from check-in to the departure lounge

Glyn Jones, Managing Director London Luton Airport, said: “We wanted an application that would do two things; be really compelling from a communications point of view, and also to be really consistent.

In a little bit of humor, the two models of projected announcers have been dubbed “Holly” and “Graham” by airport staff.

I’m waiting for the Minority Report jokes to start rolling in when I start talking about what a cloud-enabled version of this might be like. The ability for informative holograms or screens to recognize the person standing in front of them is a bastion of fiction and if we wanted to do this with our current technology it would probably involve our smartphones. If the technology behind the holographic helper could contact our phones, negotiate a secure connection, and then connect to our public cloud information it could determine our preferences and expectations (likely pre-set by us or hidden away in a who-knows-what consumer database) and tailor its presentation to us.

In fact, why shouldn’t this sort of presentation “remember” that someone is a frequent flier or that a person in the group might need special assistance up the ramp—thus adding that to their queue of useful information in order to remind a particular passenger how to access those amenities. The smartphones carried by the particular passengers could be in communication with the airport, telling it their basic ticket information which would include this information that the airport staff already needs to know anyway.

Or, it could go a step even more interactive. Cloud-computing and storage would become an important resource for tracking the status of connecting flights hours into the future and motion sensors and cameras could identify a specific smartphone waved at the announcer, causing them to react to the individual. “Wave your phone here to receive up-to-date information on the status of your connection.” Granted, you might not want that information spouted out while still in line for security, but imagine a similar virtual assistant standing next to the information desk for simple queries.

Below is a video demonstration of the holographic airport staff members. They’re not quite uncanny, but they are a little bit creepy in the bad-special-FX sort of way that old science fiction shows tend to generate. Rather an overgrown television screen, puffed up to life-sized. As they’re supposed to attract and keep the attention of passersby, the delivery method will be put to the test to see if the presentation does in fact make security work for their flesh-and-blood coworkers easier.