A low-cost Webcam & personal computer opens doors

Face recognition is one of the most successful ways for biometric recognition. One of its advantages is the high social acceptance by users, because it does not have the criminal stigma associated to other biometric traits, such as fingerprints. In addition, the cost of a webcam can be below 20 USD, which is certainly lower than other biometric acquisition devices. For this reason, the authors have developed a low-cost door-opening system, which is installed in our university premises for lab control access.     

Minutiae detection algorithm for fingerprint recognition

Among the main innovation prospects within the so-called Information Society, and in the framework of future communications systems, we find the design of database-access integral services, e-commerce and communication systems, together with remote control of terminals and devices, being the result of global services derived from last generation integration of mobile telephony and internet. Some features standout from such future services: security (guaranteeing user's privacy while in operation) in human-machine interacting (thus offering the same degree of spontaneity found in human communication through speech). To deal with security problems, the use of biometric-based technology (specifically through face, fingerprint, and speech) is proposed, because those technologies have reached a high degree of maturity, such as allowing successful application on secure authentication     

Fingerprints thinning algorithm

During the last years, the authors are designing a high resolution fingerprint identification system based on minutiae extraction. In this sense, a fingerprint thinning algorithm by means of morphological image processing operations is presented, to improve the minutiae map involved. The first step, as in every biometric system, is to obtain an image of the user's fingerprint. After this, a pre-processing algorithm is applied which enables feature extraction steps to obtain the location and type of all minutiae; i.e., the discontinuities in the ridges and valleys of the fingerprint.