Could SilentSense rival Apple's iPhone 5s fingerprint scanner?
Apple's Touch Id has prompted debate due to security and privacy implications, but is a better alternative already available?
U.S.-based scientist Cheng Bo and his colleagues at the Illinois Institute of Technology have recently published a paper on Arxiv which documents new software called SilentSense. According to the developers, the software is able to detect and recognize a smartphone user with almost perfect accuracy.
"When using the smartphone, the unique operating dynamics of the user is detected and learnt by collecting the sensor data and touch events silently," the authors write. "We conducted extensive evaluations of our approaches on the Android smartphone, we show that the user identification accuracy is over 99 percent."
SilentSense uses a smartphone's accelerometer and gyroscope to measure movements as well as scanning the physical characteristics of your finger. Pressure patterns, the duration of touch, fingertip measurements and position are all recorded to verify your identity when accessing a device.
The authors say that SilentSense is able to identify in ten taps or less at this high rate of accuracy. However, it would be interesting to see how this movement-based technology fares when behavioral patterns change -- such as when a user is ill or on the move with their mobile.
Image credit: CNET
This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com