SBIR Phase I: Flexible and High Performance Biometric Tools for Small-to-Medium Scale Identification Applications

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I research project proposes a library of low-cost, flexible, and high performance biometric tools that target the small- and medium-sized business market. These tools, comprising both hardware -- low-cost fingerprint device and microphone, and associated software, can work individually or in a combined manner via multi-modal fusion. For low cost fingerprint devices, these novel image processing tools can robustly and reliably capture fingerprints for recognition. In particular, for the low cost sweep sensor, algorithms are proposed to splice fingerprints obtained from multiple sweeps into a high quality fingerprint. Additionally, the project will develop low-cost touch sensor, with novel algorithms to mosaic multiple fingerprints from a single user to form a single complete and high quality fingerprint. For voice print recognition, the research will enhance the recognition performance by combining an ordinary microphone with a glottal motion sensor that can help the speaker verification process in two ways. The combined market for fingerprint and voice will be 2.7 billion dollars by 2008. There are many potential users of these flexible and low-cost biometric tools. For applications involving computer network security, the use of fingerprint and voice prints, these biometric tools will enhance existing password techniques. Other potential applications include community and building entrance checkpoints.