TAMPA, Fla. — Fans of thriller movies are familiar with the high-tech iris scanners that read an eyeball and allow access to super secret facilities in the basements of shadowy Washington spy agencies.
What seemed like science fiction in the 1980s is science fact now.
A quick stroll around the exhibition hall at the recent Biometrics Consortium conference here found about a dozen vendors eager to sell the technology.
But where are the customers? So far, the government is driving the development of iris scanners and other biometric technologies, said Jerry Thames, executive advisor to Booz Allen Hamilton.
“There’s a paucity of investment in the private sector,” he said. “When is somebody going to buy something?”
There are numerous applications for iris scanners, especially when verifying identities in the banking sector and for computer users who want to cut down on fraud, he said. But the technology is far from being ubiquitous.
Cyber-criminals are becoming more sophisticated and there is a hunger in the market for spoof proof ways to verify the identity of online users, he said.
Iris scan advocates have long touted the benefits of the technology over fingerprints. The user does not need to make contact with a surface, for example.
John Aceti, senior director of business development at Sarnoff Corp., is responsible for finding customers in the non-government market.
“We see it as a business that will take off, but not yet,” he said. “There are fascinating niche applications have come along that will result in hundreds and tens of thousands of [units sold] per year,” he said. Due to confidentiality agreements, he would not reveal who the customers were, or even what sector they are in. He would only say that they aren’t the traditional security applications.
Sarnoff is an engineering firm, and normally doesn’t do manufacturing, but to tap into these niche applications, it is going to start making products, he said.
Sarnoff developed the Iris-on-the-Move scanner, which reads irises from standoff distances as the subject walks through a portal or drives past a reader.
Brian Rhea, director of corporate communications at Aoptix Technologies, said the acceptance of iris scanners so far has been hindered by the difficulty users have lining up their eyes with the readers.
The company is selling an InSight 2 meter standoff iris recognition system that automatically finds the subject within a large capture zone, tracks the eye and picks up a reading.
“We think what has held back the advancement of iris is the ease of use,” Rhea said.
“We know that the government has been passionate about this … but we believe we are definitely going to do well into commercial access market… It is part of our core business strategy,” he added.
Travis Jaeger, marketing manager at Iritech Inc., believes his company’s low-cost solution will allow more iris scanners to be installed in laptops. The software and camera could be sold for as little as $200, he said.
Yuri Hoyos, of Global Rainmakers Inc., which also is selling an iris scanner, agreed that getting the cost down will help the technology proliferate.
“There is a market in the private sector,” he said.
“You have to get a system out there that is cost effective, you have to show them that you will save them money, their security will be enhanced, and their accounting will be enhanced.”
Meanwhile, Rob Parke, a manufacturer’s representative for a Panasonic brand iris scanner, said business outside the federal government has been great, at least in the southern Florida region where he operates. He’s sold several hundred units of the BM-ET200 iris reader so far.
Schools have been good customers. With increasing security concerns, they want to keep outsiders off school property. Fingerprint and palm readers are not as good for such applications because children often show up to school with dirty hands, he said.
The cost of such systems is always an issue because schools don’t have a lot of funds. Some of his customers are private schools that can afford the systems. Panasonic has also worked to reduce licensing fees, and that has brought the cost down, he said.
Thames said the private sector may be looking toward the government to work out policy issues with privacy, identity theft and ensuring that databases can communicate with each other.
Aceti agreed. The federal government during the last year is starting to get these issues worked out. When it does, there will be more confidence in the private sector.
“Those things haven’t yet been resolved, and that seems to be holding people up from making the big commitments that are going to drive the marketplace,” Aceti said.
“Then the end users will be more comfortable about investing in this technology.”