Yahoo Tests Ear-Print Scanners for Smartphones

Many of us use PINs to unlock our phones, and some of the more tech-savvy among us might even use a fingerprint scanner. But what about scanning another part of your body instead, say, your knuckles, your palm, or even your ear? That's what Yahoo Labs is proposing and currently testing with their new Bodyprint system. Fingerprint scanners are becoming all the rage, but smartphones with the technology can be on the expensive end. If you think about it, a fingerprint isn't very big. The minute details of the grooves would need a scanner with a high input resolution, which is what makes it all so costly. But ears, palms and knuckles are all bigger than a fingertip, meaning that a smartphone's touchscreen could be used to scan them, in spite of the lower input resolution. All the user would have to do is press the body part against the screen, and wait for the scanner to do its job, which is a relatively quick process. The team has put the new system through a small initial trial of 12 participants, and it's proven surprisingly effective. Bodyprint was able to recognise specific users with a 99.5% accuracy rate, and, excitingly, a 99.98% success rate when identifying which body part was used to scan. And according to the team, scanning ears achieved 99.8% success rate! According to experts, one of the benefits of using an ear scanner is that it offers greater privacy than some other biometric identification systems. For example, fingerprint scanners in the latest iPhones have proven vulnerable to hackers, and this is obviously something we all want to avoid. One interesting aspect of the system is that multiple users can have their prints stored on a device, and documents can be locked, needing the prints of many users to open it. However, there is a catch with the system, too. The algorithm errs on the side of caution, turning the right person away frequently. An average false rejection rate of almost 27% could be seen across all of the possible body parts, meaning that when even the right person was using the device, they were turned away. Scanning the ear proved to be the most efficient method, rejecting users only 7.8% of the time. Of course, the obvious fear with a system like this is that it won't be accurate enough. But the rejection rate isn't really something to worry about now because this new take on biometrics is still in its early days. And fingerprint scanners were actually around for quite a long time before they become good enough to use as they are now. We don't yet know about any commercial applications planned for the system, but the team is working on improving the recognition algorithm. "Unlocking your smartphone is something you do 150 times per day," said Yahoo Labs research scientist Christian Holz. "You want to make unlocking it convenient but also secure." To check out the system in action, take a look at the video below: [video width="600" height="275" id="JrK1wQjh980" type="youtube"]