Communications of the ACM
Handheld Touch Screen Device May Lead to Mobile Fingerprint Id
FBI field work helped the NIST team design the Mobile ID program, which is intended to help officers identify people quickly and easily on the scene, instead of taking them back to a station for fingerprinting.
Credit: National Institute of Standards and Technology
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has developed software for a handheld touch-screen device that identifies fingerprints and faces. The original objective was to design and compile the requirements for the software as requested by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which needed it to run on a handheld device with a touch screen about the size of an index card. A major challenge was understanding what functions are the most important while paring down the visual interface to a miniature screen. The NIST researchers developed a tool that could take pictures of fingerprints and faces and send the data wirelessly to a central hub for analysis.
However, NIST researchers decided to take the concept further to see if they could scale the design down to fit a screen only 2 inches by 3 inches. The researchers are now working with other security agencies on a program called Mobile ID, which is intended to help officers identify people quickly and easily on the scene, instead of taking people back to a station for fingerprinting.
The next step is to integrate an actual fingerprint sensor into the demo program.
From NIST Tech Beat
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