UIDAI partners to develop contactless fingerprint capture software for phones
A touchless fingerprint biometric capture system will be jointly developed by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) and the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IIT Bombay), with the two organizations signing a memorandum of understanding.
The partners plan to develop touchless fingerprint capture technology with built-in liveness detection to support biometric authentication with a modality other than face, according to the announcement. The system will capture multiple fingers at once to maximize accuracy, and is planned for integration with the larger Aadhaar ecosystem.
The contactless fingerprint capability will be developed to work on common mobile phones, with a focus on delivering a convenient user experience.
IIT Bombay will participate through its National Centre of Excellence in Technology for Internal Security (NCETIS), which is a joint initiative with the Federal Government’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).
Biometric authentication is used for many different types of transactions with Aadhaar. Total Aadhaar authentication reached 2.26 billion in February, according to the latest UIDAI figures, and most area carried out with fingerprints.
Independent testing indicates that state-of-the-art contactless fingerprint technologies has become accurate enough for suitability to certain use cases, particularly when matching against templates enrolled with touch fingerprint scanners.
Technologies being developed in the private sector, however, will presumably advance further by the time the fruits of UIDAI and IIT Bombay’s labor can compete with the best.
