May 19

Camera Reads Fingerprints From a Distance in Seconds

Posted in: R&D and Inventions, security, Today's Chili

Your Jedi mind tricks will not work on me

In the future (or distant past?), Obi Wan Kenobi might not be quite so cocky about which droids you are looking for. If the Empire had equipped its weak-minded Storm Troopers with the AIRprint Fingerprint scanner, it would have seen his arrogant hand wave and recorded the prints of each of his self-important fingers.

The AIRprint may sound like something from Apple (actually, it sounds exactly like something from Apple), but is in fact a box that can read fingerprints from over six feet away. It uses two 1.3MP cameras which are each tuned to a different plane of polarized light, one horizontal and one vertical. The box sends out a beam of polarized light and while one camera sees peaks, the other sees valleys, effectively upping the resolution greatly. This allows it to photograph your prints from afar in around one second per finger.

The main use would be building security, speeding up scans and making them easier to do. Future versions of this experimental tech will be faster and able to scan a whole hand’s worth of fingers at once. When that happens, George Lucas may have to rewrite the famous scene.

Obi Wan: “These are not the droids you’re looking for. Move along.”

TSA Storm Trooper: “These are not the… Wait. Sir, please follow me.”

Obi Wan (waving hand): “You will not perform a body cavity search on me.”

TSA Storm Trooper: “Sir, please stop that. You’re embarrassing yourself.”

AIRprint project page [AOS via MIT Tech Review]

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