Since creating the first contact-free palm vein authentication sensor in 2003, Fujitsu's biometric security solution has been getting smaller and smaller. Now, the company has developed a new system that's half the thickness of current offerings yet retains the same performance and accuracy levels as the latest commercially-available PalmSecure designs. The Japanese tech giant is claiming the title of the world's smallest and slimmest palm vein authentication sensor for its new creation and says that it will likely be headed for use in mobile products such as tablet computers, although there's currently no indication as to when that might be.
Keeping data secure is a very serious business, but allowing users to choose their own passwords to lock down files is clearly not a good idea. Systems that make use of the biological characteristics of the human body for personal identification have obvious benefits, including high accuracy and resistance to counterfeiting and impersonation. Most of our readers will be familiar with fingerprint, iris, face and perhaps even nose and ear scanners, but the new system developed by Fujitsu uses the normally invisible vein pattern of the palm and fingers to authenticate a user.
Just a few short years after developing the first contact-free palm vein authentication system, Fujitsu's sensors were already a fraction of the size of the original – and they've been getting smaller ever since. Researchers at Fujitsu Laboratories have now designed a brand new compact sensor that's said to have 80 percent less volume than its predecessor.
The use of new image sensors and a newly-designed optical system comprising a new low-distortion wide-angle lens and a diffused lighting system has led Fujitsu to slim down its biometric technology to a thickness of just five millimeters, small enough to be housed in slots of existing products that were previously used for fingerprint scanners.
Fujitsu says that a technique for correcting the quality of images captured by the system has been developed that results in the same level of performance and accuracy as provided by the company's existing PalmSecure products, which are said to have a false-negatives rate of 0.01 percent and a false-positives rate of 0.00008 percent.
The company's R&D department is reported to be currently working on bringing the new technology to market.
Source: Fujitsu