Periodic Reporting for period 1 - Digitus (Touchless fingerprinting scanner)
Período documentado: 2020-07-01 hasta 2021-12-31
The use of fingerprints for personal identification dates back to the ninetieth century, while its digital integration into every day devices is relatively new.
Fingerprint authentication is more secure and convenient than passwords for modern electronics, making this technology an increasingly common feature in smartphones, tablets and in a host of other applications.
Almost 350 million fingerprint sensors will be shipped next year only for consumer electronics applications, for a market worth around 10 B€ globally.
With the world progressively going digital, digital security is the main concern and our daily experience highlights two main issues with respect to fingerprint sensors:
• Reliability of the fingerprint sensor is a major issue, as capacitive fingerprint sensors can be easily spoofed. Besides, failures in recognising the fingerprint undermines the user experience.
• Form factor: fingerprint sensors take a vital space of the display, challenging the ongoing trend of borderless consumer electronics.
That’s why the electronics industry is searching for a new technology to create a 3D
image of the fingerprints, which is more secure, energy efficient and seamlessly integrated in the device.
At Piemacs, a high tech startup company stemming from the pioneering research activities carried out at the EPFL’s Muralt’s lab, we have developed a novel technology to realise a fingerprint sensor based on ultrasounds that can scan a fingerprint through a surface, having high accuracy yet at prototypal stage, also discriminating live from dead fingers.
This provides utmost reliability and allows the sensor to be embedded underneath the display or the user interface of any device.
Fingerprint authentication is more secure and convenient than passwords for modern electronics, making this technology an increasingly common feature in smartphones, tablets and in a host of other applications.
Almost 350 million fingerprint sensors will be shipped next year only for consumer electronics applications, for a market worth around 10 B€ globally.
With the world progressively going digital, digital security is the main concern and our daily experience highlights two main issues with respect to fingerprint sensors:
• Reliability of the fingerprint sensor is a major issue, as capacitive fingerprint sensors can be easily spoofed. Besides, failures in recognising the fingerprint undermines the user experience.
• Form factor: fingerprint sensors take a vital space of the display, challenging the ongoing trend of borderless consumer electronics.
That’s why the electronics industry is searching for a new technology to create a 3D
image of the fingerprints, which is more secure, energy efficient and seamlessly integrated in the device.
At Piemacs, a high tech startup company stemming from the pioneering research activities carried out at the EPFL’s Muralt’s lab, we have developed a novel technology to realise a fingerprint sensor based on ultrasounds that can scan a fingerprint through a surface, having high accuracy yet at prototypal stage, also discriminating live from dead fingers.
This provides utmost reliability and allows the sensor to be embedded underneath the display or the user interface of any device.
Two WP were active in parallel during the reporting period, namely WP1 Technological Feasibility and WP2 Business Feasibility.
In particular, the main results of this last reporting period include:
WP1: Previous to this Project Piemacs has had developed a working prototype of the finger print scanner DIGITUS provided an opportunity for developing a lab scale demonstrator with small foot print and portable. We had two goals in mind for this planning. First, a small and portable system would enable us to present our technology to potential investors and secondly, we could explore an small footprint electronics that is also scalable for higher volume production.
WP2: An analysis of the key system requirements has been carried out, to provide Piemacs with quantitative data on the specification that the final product must have in order to be competitive in the market.
The specifications, in terms of resolution, sensing area, False Reject Rate (FRR), False Accept Rate (FAR), grey-level quantization, geometric accuracy, input/output linearity, signal-to-noise ratio and fingerprint grey range have been used by Piemacs to validate the demonstrator and to identify the most viable business case.
A detailed analysis of the application scenarios of Digitus was carried out, including law enforcement and public security, border and migration control, civil identification, healthcare applications, physical and logical accesses.
The analysis allowed us to identify the logical access application as the most promising option to enter the market.
Following the identification of the potential value delivered by the Digitus technology, we have analyzed the market potential and the competitive scenario, we developed the business model, and we prepared a 5 years business plan to guide the further development of the technology.
In particular, the main results of this last reporting period include:
WP1: Previous to this Project Piemacs has had developed a working prototype of the finger print scanner DIGITUS provided an opportunity for developing a lab scale demonstrator with small foot print and portable. We had two goals in mind for this planning. First, a small and portable system would enable us to present our technology to potential investors and secondly, we could explore an small footprint electronics that is also scalable for higher volume production.
WP2: An analysis of the key system requirements has been carried out, to provide Piemacs with quantitative data on the specification that the final product must have in order to be competitive in the market.
The specifications, in terms of resolution, sensing area, False Reject Rate (FRR), False Accept Rate (FAR), grey-level quantization, geometric accuracy, input/output linearity, signal-to-noise ratio and fingerprint grey range have been used by Piemacs to validate the demonstrator and to identify the most viable business case.
A detailed analysis of the application scenarios of Digitus was carried out, including law enforcement and public security, border and migration control, civil identification, healthcare applications, physical and logical accesses.
The analysis allowed us to identify the logical access application as the most promising option to enter the market.
Following the identification of the potential value delivered by the Digitus technology, we have analyzed the market potential and the competitive scenario, we developed the business model, and we prepared a 5 years business plan to guide the further development of the technology.
Piemacs’ sensor offers advantages both in manufacturing and in use such as miniaturization and lower power consumption. In addition, PZT thin films currently are the materials of choice for many applications of piezoelectric MEMS; this has led to more and more foundry services (i.e. STMicroelectronics, Rohm) which will decrease the fabrication cost of PZT- based fingerprint scanners.
We have developed a working prototype which delivers 32x32 pixel images at a lateral resolution of 150μm per pixel, in an automated way. It is a very flexible system which allows to test many different configurations to find out which one is optimal. However, because of its purpose as a development tool, it has a very large footprint.
We have developed a working prototype which delivers 32x32 pixel images at a lateral resolution of 150μm per pixel, in an automated way. It is a very flexible system which allows to test many different configurations to find out which one is optimal. However, because of its purpose as a development tool, it has a very large footprint.