12

NEWS/COMMENT

Biometric Technology Today July/August 2013

...Continued from page 3

Major partnerships boost soft biometrics

Two major partnerships, announced recently, show increasing accept-

ance and usage of 'soft' biometrics. Soft biometrics measure expression and emotions, gender or age, rather than measure bodily parts for identifi-cation and authentication.

Be On, AOL’s global branded content busi-ness, has partnered with Realeyes, an emotional testing platform that measures how people feel and react when they view branded video content. Separately, Emotient and iMotionshave have joined to create an integrated facial expression rec-ognition, bio sensor and eye tracking solution.

Be On defines biometric tracking as determin-ing the emotional impact of a piece of video content. LG was one of the first brands to inte-grate the technology for branded video content with its latest campaign ‘So Real It’s Scary 2’.

LG worked with over 600 viewers in several markets to track the emotional response to its film, which tests the theory that men cannot go to the bathroom when someone is watching them. Be On and Realeyes showed that the film performed better than 95% of ads and reso-nated best with the 18-34 demographic, LG’s target audience.

Although confusion was the dominant emo-tion for the first 45 seconds, happiness spiked strongly at the punch line, far above industry norms and remained highly elevated throughout.

All content testing is done through a webcam meaning content can be tested anywhere, any-time and through multiple devices, to a selection of panel users who have consented to the testing.

Facial expression analysis firm Emotient and iMotions, tracking and biometric software plat-form company, have agreed that Emotient’s emo-tion recognition solution will be integrated into iMotions Attention Tool, an eye tracking and bio-sensor software platform for research and usability.

Procter and Gamble, the US Air Force and Yale University are the first customers of a newly integrated platform that combines facial expression recognition and analysis, eye track-ing, EEG and GSR technologies. The com-bined solution is designed for usability research, market research, ‘neurogaming’ and academic and scientific research.

“The whole is definitely greater than the sum of the parts with the integration of these technologies, and by combining four key sensors into a single platform, the depth of

discovery will be infinitely greater,” says Ken Denman, CEO, Emotient.

NIST urged to set standards for dual biometrics in ID cards

US legal authorities are urging the National Institute of Standards

and Technology (NIST) to set stand-ards for incorporating dual biometric capabilities for identification cards by 1 September, reports Federal News Radio.

The standards have been under development since 2011 and include a number of modalities from face to fingerprint.

Without the biometric standards and technologies in place, politician John Mica is concerned about national security.

“I think we’ve left ourselves at an incred-ible risk,” says Mica, chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform sub-committee on Government Operations, was reported as saying at a hearing. “We don’t know who is coming and going.”

Homeland Security Presidential Directive HSPD-12 has called for new standards to be adopted governing interoperable use of iden-tity credentials to allow physical and logical access to federal government locations and systems. The Personal Identity Verification (PIV) standard for federal employees and contractors, Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS 201), was developed to define procedures and specifications for issuance and use of an interoperable identity credential.

Privacy issues around biometric technology are making headlines worldwide and that is not always good news for the industry. Google is once

again treading the creepy line with its Glass development, though again it has stressed it will not cross the line with facial recognition.

Major names such as Google do tend to grab the headlines, but Microsoft and Intel are another couple of names that are driving the biometrics market into the mainstream too.

Microsoft and Intel are both throwing their weight behind biometrics as it is revealed that Windows 8.1 will support fingerprint scan-ners. Intel is preparing for the future by bet-ting on gesture and voice control biometrics according to a report from the Taiwanese trade show Computex 2013. Intel will invest $100m over the next two to three years in companies that make breakthroughs in these areas, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Windows 8.1, which was due for preview release in June, demonstrates Microsoft’s belief that PC and mobile phone makers are ready to make fingerprint readers a mainstream feature for authentication, reports CSO.

The Windows 8 upgrade will contain the driver necessary to run the hardware, Chris Hallum, senior product manager at Microsoft, told CSO. Previously third party software was needed to run fingerprint scanners on Windows.

Some observers suggest Microsoft may be playing catchup, after Apple’s $356m acquisi-tion of biometric firm AuthenTec.

Government has been a major driver of biometric technology in some countries, most notably India. The UK is not one of them, as we report in this issue (see ‘National ID cards in the UK: the role of biometrics’ page 7).

Increasing security concerns, lack of data protection and rising cyber crime in China is raising the demand for biometric solutions there, reports Research and Markets, which points out that China is also planning the implementation of its national ID project across the country this year, which will give a ‘much awaited thrust to the industry’.

The fingerprint identification market captured the highest market share in China's biometrics market in terms of revenue earned during 2012. The report ‘China Biometrics Market Forecast & Opportunities, 2018’, says the fingerprint identi-fication market is anticipated to grow at a CAGR of around 38% by the end of 2018.

A large biometric project in China is e-pass-ports, which is primarily to be implemented in Shaanxi province in northern region and would act as the main growth driver for biometrics market in the next five years.

There is no doubt that the Aadhaar national ID programme in India has had a major impact on the biometric sector and Chinese national adoption of the technology would further propel biometric technology into the mainstream.

Tracey Caldwell

COMMENT

standardssoft biometrics