Portable biometrics collection & verification:
A case study in delivering more metrics, more mobility, more durability and more 'openness'!

Fingerprint and palm readers, iris scanners, facial recognition systems and other biometrics systems used in buildings and at ports of entry are well established and becoming more prevalent. Even many commercial computers have user fingerprint verification systems on them. But what about mobile users operating on police beats, army personnel at remote border crossings in Afghanistan, customs officers aboard patrol vessels operating in waters off Australia's far north coast, or aid workers in a disaster zone after an earthquake?

The needs of security forces, police, immigration and customs officials or emergency response personnel all differ. Some need to verify identity as individuals are encountered, by comparing a person's biometrics with a database. Others need to collect biometrics data to create databases, that are compiled in central offices and then accessed by (often) several agencies, often for differing applications.

While the commercial market is saturated with mobile fingerprint scanners and other commercial grade hardware, applications addressing border patrol, law enforcement and national security roles have often 'tied up' by vendors offering both software AND hardware, who tie users to their hardware by using a proprietary approach. But when their hardware proves unsuitable by virtue of its size, weight, lack of durability or non-optimal processing capabilities, many independent software developers and integrators face a dilemma.

In 2007 we began a proof-of-concept exercise for an Australian state police force that involved adding a fingerprint scanner to our rugged PDA. After much consultation with the customer and the integrator, it became apparent that a simple PDA-mounted fingerprint scanner had limited applications.

For starters, a PDA's mobile operating system and processor have limited capacity, making them unsuitable for facial recognition or auto-iris capture applications. They are, however, perfect if a user needs a compact platform, only needs to scan fingerprints and take mugshots, then locally verify a fingerprint against a watchlist (up to say 100,000 individuals), or communicate with a remote AFIS (Automated Fingerprint Identification System) to have a print verified against a central database.

For this role, we devised the DuoMetrics system, a Mil-Rugged PDA system for capturing full fingerprints, scanning latent fingerprints and taking hi-resolution mugshots.

However, for applications that required verification against larger databases (eg more than 200,000), and that required the ability to process mugshots or iris scans locally (ie in the palm of a user's hand), hardware with more powerful processing capability would be required. The answer often sought by others is to use a notebook based system with various attached devices, or a tablet computer with embedded cameras and scanners. But that imposes a size and weight penalty that many mobile users find hard to cope with.

Enter TrioMetrics, a UMPC based, Intel Atom based miniature tablet computer, weighing less than 700 grams. Coupled with the world's smallest, most accurate, portable, computer-based auto-iris imaging system, the entire system weights less than 950 grams.

While that's impressive enough for some, what makes both these systems even more flexible is that they both create 'open standards' EFT (Electronic Fingerprint Template) and EBT (Electronic  Biometrics Template) which makes them compatible with any biometrics collection and verfication software. So not only were we able to create systems with superior levels of ruggedisation, superior compactness and superior functionality, we've not committed users to work with proprietary software solutons that only work with proprietary minutae.

Today we're partnering with leading software developers to create application specific biometrics solutions based on our open platforms, whether they be straightforward law enforcement applications, or in support of counter-terrorist activities aimed at collecting and sharing biometrics data in order to identify and capture those responsible for deploying improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

Discover more about our solutions:

    DuoMetrics: rugged fingerprint and mugshot solution
    TrioMetrics: rugged fingerprint, mugshot and iris solution