Samsung and SRI Team Up To Manufacture Iris Recognition Devices

Security is an ever increasing issue amongst today’s data-centric world. Everyone needs some form of security in order to keep their personal details safe. There are innumerable password generators, password managers, biometric fingerprint scanners and other security devices such as these.

You may, like me, own an iPhone that has in-built fingerprint sensing technology. This type of biometric security is, although flawed, still cutting edge. It does make us think about the next stage in this field though and it looks like Samsung is working on improving their biometric security in the not too distant future.

It has just been announced that SRI International (Stanford Research Institute) has given the exclusive licensing of its Iris on the Move (IOM) technology to Samsung in order that they can use it in their up and coming mobile devices.

IOM has a number of technologies, which have been built by SRI that are unlike standard biometric readers, in that they make the user position their eyes for a few moments, allowing the user to just “glance and go,” as it were.

The partnership of SRI and Samsung is all set to begin the production of mobile devices with the new technology for B2B applications. The first device from Samsung with the new iris recognition technology is going to be a customised Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro 8.4 tablet, which will be introduced via the SIA New Product Showcase at ISC West 2015.

Regarding the new Galaxy Tab, SRI said:

“This new model will provide fast, easy-to-use, and accurate biometric identity management solutions to its users. Tests have shown this purely iris-based solution to be more than 1,000 times more accurate than published fingerprint data.”

The company has also said that IOM will be normally suited for use in airport terminals, access control and in workforce management. The research institute has also said that they are looking for early adopters for other types of products.

SRI International have a history of cutting edge technology. The company was the pioneer of the Siri voice recognition system that was created back in December 2007. Apple acquired the spin-off company from SRI a couple of years later in April 2010 and then utilised the system for their own purposes with the launch of the Siri personal voice assistant in 2011.

This move should come as no real surprise to followers of the Samsung universe. When the Samsung Galaxy S5 was released with their version of fingerprint scanning tech, the company’s Senior VP, Injong Rhee said that the form was looking into biometrics in the future: “We’re looking at various types of biometric [mechanisms] and one of things that everybody is looking at is iris detection.”

Although the press release regarding this new technology and the customised Galaxy Tab doesn’t mention if the product will make its way to consumers, you can be sure this type of biometric security will be on the rise.

[Image via businesskorea]

SOURCE: Android Authority