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3-D Light System May Revolutionize Fingerprinting
coondoggie writes "The US Department of Homeland Security's Science & Technology Directorate recently awarded almost $420,000 to a Kentucky company to further develop a contactless finger print/biometric system. The goal is a machine that can snap 10 fingerprints in high resolution in less than 10 seconds, without human intervention. This goal is beginning to look feasible. FlashScan3D is working with the University of Kentucky's Center for Visualization and Virtual Environments, and has developed a technique called 'structured light illumination' (WIPO patent description), where a pattern of dots or stripes is projected onto a curved or irregular surface."
Like RFID-loaded passports and cameras at sports arenas, this technology only seems useful at violating our privacy remotely.
We are talking about Chinese Democracy a few stories below. What scares me more than Chinese Democracy (and Axl's hairplugs) is American Fascism.
Do you actual do any real editing slashdot?
The US Department of Homeland Security's Science & Technology Directorate...
Stop right there. Already, I don't like it!
We may be turning the West into a collection of police states, but at least they'll be time-efficient police states.
Who'd have though it would ever be considered a problem if it took more than 10 seconds to take 10 finger prints...
Donate free food here
I'm very interested in these next generation loks for doors. How long, though, until someone comes up with an attack against this which compares to the Gummy Bear method or using superglue smoke to lift fingerprints?
Bring on the Gordian Knot company!
Unlike that 2D variety. Ours is intelligently designed to increase the portfolio for the ability to acquire specific traits through the application and realization of increased activation of photo-active compounds in a structured ideology to capture terrorists.
Let's try to keep all comments about the typo in this thread so we don't pollute the rest of the conversation.
Step 1: Place fingers on scanner
Step 2: Tell scanner to scan fingers
Step 3: ????
Step 4: Police State!
Why should a technology developed using a grant from the public (taxpayers) be patented? Shouldn't the folks who paid for it be able to use it freely?
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
Damn, now I need tinfoil gloves to go with my hat!
the "academics" should figure out a way to win more
more basketball games.
Yours In Socialism,
Kilgore Trout
Well, if I have to live in a police state, at least this will help them know if it is really me or just someone using my name and Social security number.
Meanwhile, what happens if it can't read my fingerprints because of damage to the skin?
Do I get sent off to jail in under 10 seconds by the computer that doesn't understand I have a skin condition?
There have been some attempts at contactless fingerprint readers for access control. The idea is to read from a distance of 1cm or so, rather than with the finger pressed up against the glass. This prevents dirt on the glass from messing up the image. In the 1990s, contactless devices were too expensive or too complicated. Now, they're probably feasible.
ya know?
Will this help stop child porn on P2P networks, or help arrest teenagers who make off-handed comments about wanting to kill their classmates?
If it doesn't do either of those things, I fail to see why law enforcement is interested.
Ten seconds is too long. Even if we set aside the dubious government driven proposition that cataloging and numbering everyone is beneficial, the fact is, an identification system that takes ten seconds is simply not beneficial. About a second, is all it should take.
Ten seconds, people won't be sure if the device is working or not, even if it says that it is. What do you do if a program stops running for ten seconds - you are start thinking about killing it. What do you do if you can't open your car door for ten seconds? You begin to doubt the key. Even typing in a password and waiting ten seconds for a response is cause for some doubt about your password.
Ten seconds is just way too long. If you are going to fund a technology like this, then hold them to a second.
This is my sig.
they'll improve the technology up to blink scanning, like drive thru ez-pass.
any public place will be subject to pass-by scanners
and paying merchants cash to avoid deep data mining won't work anymore-
wearing gloves will get you searched.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
This goal is beginning to lok feasible.
I thank you misspelled a word.
Time to invest in glove companies.
I'm going to disagree with your argument in letter but not in spirit.
Grants are a form of investment. The government is paying a company money to encourage development that they believe will improve all of society. They are no more entitled to free use of the resulting innovation any more than another investor or venture capitalist would be. Unlike most investment, a grant is essentially a gift, but they do come with certain obligations that may offset the value of the "free" money.
Good examples of this system working can be seen in the cable franchises. Local governments give a grant and monopoly to a selected cable company, with the obligation that service is made available to every single household in the region. Without the grant, the cable company may have never entered the region because the profit might have never paid off the cost of running the cable.
I'm not going to disagree with you in spirit, however, because this particular area of research has nothing to offer society. Biometrics, until we have computers above the intelligence of a human security guard, are no more secure than a plain metal key (but a whole lot more gory).
You ever had your fingerprints scanned? It's a lot more complex than that. They have to get the entire fingerprint including the sides so it involves rolling of the fingers as they are scanned.
... assuming a full set, then that is nearly 80 years continuous use to fingerprint the current US population.
Geez, a man could grow old and die in that time!
Structured lighting techniques are, in general, well known. The question is more whether the specific technique they're claiming is known or not.
Hasn't the film industry been doing pretty much the same thing to generate 3D models of objects and people? I know the idea of projecting a grid onto an object and reconstructing the 3d data from images taken at different vantage points was thought of long ago.
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
Sounds like someone at DARPA got drunk and played too much final fantasy the weekend before their proposal was due...
There is more to science than physics!
www.iomalfunction.blogspot.com
Looks like my $10 pair of gloves beats their $420,000 fingerprinting device.....
Me: 1,275 DHS: 0
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
I never leave the house without first coating the tips of my fingers in Elmers' Glue.
(Don't ask for a link, because I don't have one).
A guy I know (PhD in physics) has done this more than 20 years ago. He basically used two light sources: a "white" one and one with a black->white gradient. Then he took a black & white pictures using nothing but the two light sources. Some image divisions and there you are: a depth map of the objects on the pictures!
You can increase the quality if you use three pictures: one normal, one with a dark-> light gradient and one with a light->dark gradient.
The only thing you should be able to do is get the gradient right (the more linear the better), but that's even something he managed to do at home with a printer, and old-fashioned chemical photo camera and some brains.
At some convention at that time he demonstrated the technology showing "flying fish". That is, he pointed the device at a fish aquarium. As light sources he used infrared lamps (and infrared cameras), so the whole effect could be done in real time during day time (actually during artificial light :-) Since the water in the aquarium was trandsparent and did not behave differently when photographed with different light sources, it was practically invisible on the 3D depth maps -- hence the *flying& fish...
I don't have any links because this is a 1st hand story. I don't know if it has been published, but it was a public exhibition, so there sould be *some* records available of that -- just in case someone is going for the litigation :-)
First of all, the patent captures hands, not fingerprints. More importantly, structured light is a standard technique for 3D capture that's in widespread use and has been around for decades. If you want to capture the 3D shape of hands, it's the obvious engineering solution.
This has to be more sanitary. Think about it. Would you want to stick your fingers where other people have stuck their fingers? How many of you actually wash your hands after using the bathroom? Think about how many who don't, who would otherwise use a fingerprint scanner instead
$420,000 to a Kentucky company...
:-)
Doesn't everybody in Kentucky have the same fingerprints?
sorry!
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
you could conceivably now be fingerprinted at a distance, were this tech highly perfected
drive by fingerprinting
a cop cruiser could just do driving patterns in a neighborhood of interest, fingerprinting everyone they drive by, until they find a match
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I could see this technology useful for datacenters. However, considering the source I am hesitant to believe it was developed for such a honest purpose.
Isn't this just a fancy version of a laser scanner used to more efficiently keep tabs on Joe Citizen?
structured light illumination is older than the internet. They can't patent it.
Haven't seen the illustrations but it appears on the surface (hah) that they are using a combination of well-known structured light technique to create 3d model of the hand. Then they do a mapping from 3D to 2D so they can fit legacy fingerprint databases presumably. Would be mind-numbing but they fit your fingers into little slots. But it should be realized that this can easily be mapping the entire hand not just fingertips, and doing it at a subsurface level i.e. blood vessels. And.. the next step sorry to say would be to add a simple cell or blood sampling device. Your hand will be immobilized. Personally I detest this whole thing.