Heading to a game at Daikin Park is about to feel a lot more like catching a flight. The Astros are rolling out upgraded Evolv Express Gen2 walkthrough units along with the company's autonomous eXpedite X-ray bag scanners, a combo meant to keep fans walking at a normal pace while the system quietly flags the small number of bags that need a closer look and cuts down on manual image checks.
Team signs on for Gen2 and eXpedite
Evolv has renewed its partnership with the Astros, who will move to the Gen2 hardware and add eXpedite. The club and the company say this will be the first-ever eXpedite setup at a professional baseball stadium, according to the Houston Chronicle. Marcel Braithwaite, the Astros' senior vice president of business operations, said the upgrade will "help us continue to deliver on our experience goals and standards for guests and staff alike," as reported by the Houston Chronicle.
What the scanners do
Evolv describes eXpedite as an autonomous, high-throughput X-ray bag scanner that uses AI and machine learning to spot concealed threats in real time and serve up clear, actionable alerts for staff. The system is built to remove the need for a trained X-ray interpreter to review every single bag image and to shrink the number of bags that need hands-on searches, according to Evolv Technologies.
How this will affect fans
The basic rules are not changing. Bags larger than 16" x 16" x 8" are still prohibited, most backpacks are still not allowed, and every bag still gets searched at the gate. The new hardware is supposed to make those checks faster without adding more human screeners, so fans are still advised to travel light and build in extra time for big games and events, per the Houston Astros.
Face tokens and privacy questions
The Astros also introduced MLB's Go-Ahead Entry facial-authentication lanes in 2024. The opt-in system converts a selfie into a token instead of storing raw images. Civil-liberties groups have raised concerns about accuracy and how the data could be used, while industry-focused coverage has walked through how that tokenization step works and highlighted those same privacy questions, according to BiometricUpdate and Houston Public Media.
Proof in the numbers
Evolv says eXpedite has screened more than one million bags for its customers since the product launched, a milestone the company leans on when pitching the technology to stadiums and other large venues. Those performance claims, paired with a growing list of stadium users, have helped drive upgrades and renewals, according to recent press materials and investor filings from Evolv Technologies.
What fans should know
Fans who want to use the hands-free Go-Ahead lanes need to download the MLB Ballpark app and enroll as outlined on the Astros' Go-Ahead Entry page. Everyone else should stick to a clear one-gallon bag or skip the bag altogether. The new machines are there to speed up the existing bag checks, not to tighten the list of what you can bring through the turnstiles.
