PITTSBURGH (AP) — High-tech security? Forget those irksome digital eye scans. Meet
the biometric shoe.
A
new lab is working to perfect special shoe insoles that can help
monitor access to high-security areas, like nuclear power plants or
special military bases.
The concept is based on research that
shows each person has unique feet, and ways of walking. Sensors in the
bio-soles check the pressure of feet, monitor gait, and use a
microcomputer to compare the patterns to a master file for that person.
If the patterns match the bio-soles go to sleep. If they don’t, a
wireless alarm message can go out.
"It’s part of a shoe that you
don’t have to think about," said Marios Savvides, head of Carnegie
Mellon University’s new Pedo-Biometrics Lab, in Pittsburgh.
The
lab, which has $1.5 million in startup funding, is a partnership with
Autonomous ID, a Canadian company that is relocating to several U.S.
cities. Todd Gray, the company president, said he saw the potential when
his daughter was in a maternity ward decorated with representations of
different baby feet all along a wall.
Autonomous ID has been
working on prototypes since 2009, with the goal of making a relatively
low cost ID system. Gray said they’ve already run tests on sample
bio-soles, which are no thicker than a common foot pad sold in
pharmacies, and achieved an accuracy rate of more than 99 percent. He
said Carnegie Mellon will broaden the tests to include "a full spectrum
of society: big, tall, thin, heavy, athletic, multicultural, on a diet,
twins and so on."
Gray wouldn’t speculate on what the system will
cost or when it might reach the marketplace, but each worker at a site
would have his or her own pair of bio-soles.
"Within the third
step, it knows it’s you, and it goes back to sleep," he said. "If I put
on yours, it would know almost instantly that I’m not you."
The
idea may seem far-fetched, but scientists have known for centuries that
individuals have unique ways of walking, and in recent years the U.S.
Department of Defense has been funding millions of dollars of gait
research, as has the Chinese government.
The Institute of
Intelligent Machines is doing extensive research into gait biometrics,
including reports of systems where a floor monitors footsteps without
people’s knowledge.
One expert who is not connected with the CMU lab said the biometric sole seems
promising.
"I
must admit I find this news very exciting," said John DiMaggio, an
Oregon podiatrist who has worked with law enforcement to use foot
information in forensic investigations. While it is too early to fully
judge the CMU research plan, DiMaggio said using feet as a biometric
identification source makes sense.
While researchers have noted
that gait can vary with injuries, fatigue and other factors, Savvides
said the bio-soles can detect signs of those things, too.
The
bio-soles might also have medical uses. Several papers presented this
month at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in
Vancouver suggest changes in how elderly people walk — such as a slowing
pace or variable stride — can provide early warnings of dementia.
Gray
said the technology is less invasive of privacy than eye scans and
other biometrics, in part because the individual data stays inside the
bio-soles.
But one group that has followed biometrics and privacy issues said there could still
be problems.
"Any
biometric capture device is a potential tracking device, just like
every iPhone is a potential tracking device. That’s just the way these
things are," said Lee Tien, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier
Foundation, a San Francisco nonprofit that monitors free speech and
privacy issues.
Tien said that the bio-soles themselves "might
make a person feel a little bit better" than other security systems and
that Gray’s claim that the system can ID a person within three steps is
"pretty impressive."
But he added that if the project is successful, bio-soles could also be implanted in
shoes secretly.
"I
wouldn’t expect Nike to build these in. But it’s potentially covert,"
he said, meaning it could be used to help spy on people.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.