They’re using a standard 2D surveillance camera to analyse a person’s motions and create a “skeletal map,” which shows the distance between joints and how they move. By comparing this map with future scans, Extreme Reality can detect any differences in movements that might indicate signs of stress and red flags. The system uses complex algorithms to detect these differences, and according to Extreme Reality, it is more than 90% accurate.
The last hurdle involved determining what specific mental tasks would be best-suited to this type of authentication — the team wanted the interaction to be as user-friendly as possible. To find the most suitable tasks, the team the brainwaves of test subjects performing seven different mental activities to authenticate their identify. Researched showed that the best tasks for this setup were ones that users didn't mind repeating on a daily basis — the tasks need to be easy, but not too boring.Interesting sort of behavioral biometric of the brain.
Under the agency's plan, people carrying passports or other citizenship documents embedded with computer chips will approach kiosks to enter the United States. The kiosks will be mounted with digital scanners connected to a staffed entry point in El Paso, Texas, where CBP officers will see them through one-way video cameras and check their IDs. When near the scanner, the microchip, a radio frequency identification transmitter, signals a remote database to draw up biographical records and a photo of the document-holder. Officers then can confirm that the person in the database is the person on the camera.
[Customs and Border Protection] CBP is actually installing an updated version of the University of Arizona's kiosk—the original was tested at the station from December to March—to determine its ability to help enroll applicants in its Trusted Traveler programs at the Mexican border. The programs, also available for airline passengers, were created after 9/11 at various ports of entry into the U.S. to expedite preapproved, low-risk travelers through dedicated lanes and kiosks. All Trusted Traveler applicants must voluntarily undergo a background check against criminal, law-enforcement, customs, immigration, agriculture and terrorist databases. The process also includes biometric fingerprint checks and an interview with a CBP officer.AUG. 15, 2012
In Nogales, human CBP officers monitor the avatar-administered pilot-test interviews, which provide them with automated feedback uploaded wirelessly to an iPad tablet that these officers can use to conduct follow-up interviews.
Applicants for the program must undergo an interview and biometric fingerprinting to be eligible for the program -- both of which can be performed by the AVATAR kiosk.Much more at the link.
Derrick said the kiosk could process travelers in five minutes.
Travelers simply stand in front of the unit -- which "looks like an ATM on steroids," according to Derrick -- and respond to yes/no questions asked in Spanish or English. "You speak to it like you speak to a person," he said.
Their answers are monitored, with any unusual physiological responses passed on to "a human field agent" who then subjects them to "a more careful interview process," said CBP spokesman Bill Brooks.
Unusual responses were not a sure sign of a lie, said Derrick. "There might be valid reasons for it beyond deception."
The computer uses three sensors to assess physiological responses: a microphone, which monitors vocal quality, pitch and frequency; an infrared camera, which looks at pupil dilation and where the eyes focus; and a high-definition camera recording facial expressions.
But with computers, it was something completely new; we just couldn’t predict where it would go. And we still don’t really know where it will go! At the time I started studying it was 1988 - it was the time before the internet - but I did like to play computer games and that was one of the reasons, for sure, that I looked into it. [ed. Emphasis added]
The detection software allows us to try to predict how atypical the behaviour is of a particular person. This may be due to nervousness or it may be due to an attempt to cover something up.It's not the tech; it's the people.
It’s very pretentious to say we will have vision-based deception detection software, but what we can show are the first signs of atypical or nervous behaviour. The human observer who is monitoring a person can see their scores and review their case. It’s more of an aid to the human observer rather than a clear-cut deception detector. That’s the whole security part.
There’s a lot of human / computer interaction involved.
[UPDATE: An uptick in recent articles like this one made me want to revisit this post. A quote from the article:Ford showed off a prototype of this future health system, developed by BlueMetal Architects, at CES. The system will be able to capture biometric data from devices such as pacemakers and glucose monitors, and will also be able to accept voice input from the driver [emph. mine].Maybe the term "biometrics" has a marketing cachet that "biostatistics" lacks; maybe for reasons of economy, journalists prefer to save ink, pixels, space and keystrokes. Whatever the reason, "biometrics" is a term that gets applied to every new application where technology is used to monitor or measure some aspect of the human body, its condition, motion or position. In being used to describe so many different things, "biometrics" has lost a great deal of precision of meaning.
DARPA has come up with another set of applications that some will be tempted to call biometrics (though DARPA doesn't call them that). DARPA is interested in collecting behavior metrics they call “cognitive fingerprints” or “human secrets” in order to develop an identity assurance model that relies on constant monitoring of an individual's unique behaviors while interacting with computer hardware.
Since...
Acta exteriora indicant interiora secreta; External actions indicate internal secrets
...maybe "actametrics" is a decent term for what DARPA's up to.
But you can see why (over)use of the term "biometrics" is so tempting. In this case, “cognitive fingerprint” and "human secret" is even more confusing than overusing "biometrics," and the folks at DARPA are geniuses that probably know their Latin scientific terms very well.
The original post, with minor edits, follows...]
The dual cameras in the system observe changes in facial expression and blood flow, with the first camera spotting signs of deceit such as lip-biting, nose-wrinkling, blinking and Freudian slips, and the second thermal imaging camera measuring flushing and blood-flow patterns around the eyes.
Even if we put aside reservations about self-reported scores on trials under unspecified conditions and grant that FAST is a technology in its infancy, that track record doesn’t inspire confidence. No one should be satisfied with a screening method that lets through more than one out of every five would-be plane bombers. Far more annoying, however, is that we don’t know exactly what the rates of false positives and false negatives were. A system that missed 20 percent of the terrorists in an airport would be bad but terrorists are rare, so disastrous mistakes would be few. But a system that snared 20 percent of innocent travelers as terrorist suspects would destroy air travel overnight.Even while extending the author's benefit of the doubt, for airports especially the (negative) return on investment would be crippling.
[UPDATE: An uptick in recent articles like this one made me want to revisit this post. A quote from the article:Ford showed off a prototype of this future health system, developed by BlueMetal Architects, at CES. The system will be able to capture biometric data from devices such as pacemakers and glucose monitors, and will also be able to accept voice input from the driver [emph. mine].Maybe the term "biometrics" has a marketing cachet that "biostatistics" lacks; maybe for reasons of economy, journalists preserve to save ink, pixels, space and keystrokes.
The original post follows...]
The dual cameras in the system observe changes in facial expression and blood flow, with the first camera spotting signs of deceit such as lip-biting, nose-wrinkling, blinking and Freudian slips, and the second thermal imaging camera measuring flushing and blood-flow patterns around the eyes.
