From technology Review
For Your Eyes Only
Everyone has a unique pattern of eye movements. A new biometric security system exploits this for a simple, hard-to-fool approach.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2010BY DUNCAN GRAHAM-ROWE E-mail Audio » Print
The way you view the world is unique, so why not use it to identify you?

A company in Israel has developed a security system that does just this--exploiting a person's unique pattern of eye movements to identify them. Most biometric security systems measure physical features that are constant, such as fingerprints or iris patterns. An eye-tracking system has the potential to be harder to fool and easier use, its creators say.

The new system tracks the way a person's eye moves as he watches an icon roam around a computer screen. The way the icon moves can be different every time, but the user's eye movements include "kinetic features"—slight variations in trajectory—that are unique, making it possible to identify him. This is less complicated than using a long pass phrase or a smart card to gain access to a computer system or a building.

"The interface is really very simple," says Daphna Palti-Wasserman, CEO of ID-U Biometrics, the company that developed the technology. "The user watches a target moving on a screen and a camera monitors their eye movement responses."

Eye tracking also requires no specialist hardware, other than a camera and a display, so it is cheaper and easier to deploy, Palti-Wasserman says. Using a standard video camera, the system can identify users with an accuracy of 97 percent, she says. Many cell phones and laptops already have this kind of hardware, so ID-U's system could be deployed widely for both desktop and mobile computing. The company is currently working on an app for the iPhone 4.

Other biometric systems can be fooled by a very accurate copy of, for example, a fingerprint or retina. This new system uses a biometric pattern that's very hard to copy, Palti-Wasserman says. "What we're doing is a challenge-response sequence," she says. "The whole process depends on what is being shown on the screen," she says.

Kevin Bowyer, a biometrics expert at the University of Notre Dame, notes that some voice, keystroke, and handwriting-based security systems already use a challenge-response approach. "The main advantage is to control the situation more in order to get better information and improve the confidence in your results," he says.

ID-U's system moves an icon across a screen in a way that elicits about a dozen distinct characteristics as the viewer's eyes move. These tiny movements are sampled 30 times a second. "When the target jumps, it activates specific mechanisms of eye movement, but when it moves smoothly or slowly, different mechanisms are activated," says Palti-Wasserman. ID-U will not reveal precisely which metrics its system uses, but Palti-Wasserman says it is analogous to watching the trajectories of two different people driving around the same track—they follow the same route, but there will be distinct differences.

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FROM PHYSORG

Driver drowsiness detected by Eyetracker
October 12, 2010

The Integrated Eyetracker developed by the Fraunhofer IDMT permits contact-free and completely calibration-free 3-D measurement of a person’s line of vision. (© Fraunhofer IDMT)

Car drivers must be able to react quickly to hazards on the road at all times. Dashboard-mounted cameras help keep drivers alert. At the VISION trade fair in Stuttgart, Germany, researchers are presenting this system from November 9-11, 2010.

Those who do a lot of driving know how tiring long car trips and night driving can be. And a simple fraction of a second can decide the difference between life and death. According to the German Road Safety Council e.V. (DVR), one in four highway traffic fatalities is the result of momentary driver drowsiness. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology IDMT in Ilmenau, Germany, have developed an assistant system that tracks a driver's eye movements and issues a warning before the driver has an opportunity to nod off to sleep.

The special feature of the Eyetracker is that it can be installed in any model of car. There is no need for a complicated calibration of the cameras. “With conventional systems, every person whose line of vision is to be monitored has to complete more or less time-consuming preparations. Because every head, every face, every pair of eyes is different,” notes Prof. Husar of the IDMT.

There is also another benefit: The system does not require a PC or a laptop. “What we have developed is a small modular system with its own hardware and programs on board, so that the line of vision is computed directly within the camera itself. Since the Eyetracker is fitted with at least two cameras that record images stereoscopically – meaning in three dimensions – the system can easily identify the spatial position of the pupil and the line of vision,” according to Husar. The information is fed out through a standard interface The information is stored in a standard interface (USB, CAN). This way, the Eyetracker can be connected directly to the car’s trip computer.

If the camera modules detect that the eye is closed for longer than a user-defined interval, it sounds an alarm. When used as a driver-assistance system, there can be four or even six cameras keeping watch over the driver’s eyes. The cameras evaluate up to 200 images per second to identify the line of vision, even when a driver’s head moves to the left or right. Yet the Eyetracker is only roughly half the size of a matchbox and practically undetected when mounted behind the sun visor and in the dashboard. The tiny lenses are just three to four millimeters in diameter.


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