Vendors reveal achievements in DHS biometrics rally — updated
The anonymized results of the 2022 DHS Biometric Technology Rally were announced last week, and showed that state of the art technology is reaching the capability of accurate processing the biometrics of groups of people in airport environments, while protecting the privacy of those who opt out.
Now, information about which vendors participated and other which aliases has begun to emerge.
A matching system provided by Paravision scored a 99.8 percent true identification rate across three of four acquisition devices. The company’s matching algorithms likewise had perfect accuracy scores for Black, Asian and white people across three of four devices.
The company was given the alias ‘Miami,’ and claims it is the only biometrics provider to score top rankings across all test scenarios.
“We are thrilled to achieve these top rankings, which are a testament to our team’s commitment to delivering outstanding performance in operational environments,” says Paravision CTO Charlie Rice. “While we relentlessly work toward improvements, this shows the strength of our commercially available Gen 5 technology and its accuracy across demographic groups.”
Vision-Box participated with one of the ten matching systems, but not a biometric acquisition this time. The ‘Grant’ matching system was entered into the rally by Vision-Box.
Vision-Box’ Grant system was one of many which returned a 99.8 percent accuracy rate with both the ‘Bison’ and ‘Wilson’ acquisition system for both groups of two and groups of four.
“Vision-Box is very satisfied and proud about its 2022 participation on this well–conducted experiment, as our performance well reflects the efforts of our R&D teams in permanently improving our Facial Recognition engine with more challenging use cases,” says Vision-Box Vice President of Strategic Sales & Global Partnerships Jeff Lennon. “Our results demonstrate a tier 1 position in accuracy, inclusiveness, and speed.”
NEC NSS also supplied a matcher, but declined to identify its code-name in the rally.
Dr. Kathleen Kiernan, President of NEC NSS, told Biometric Update in an emailed statement that the company’s NeoFace “achieved top matching system rankings,” with a 99.8 percent TIR across three of four acquisition devices, and a 100 percent match rate for people self-reporting their racial demographic group as Black, Asian and white.
Imageware, which sold its biometrics assets to be integrated by Tech5, revealed its participation in the rally just before it kicked off last September.
Thales’ Neville Pattinson, head of Business Development and Strategic Marketing for the Digital Identity & Security business’s Identity & Biometric Solutions U.S. team, revealed during the results presentation that the company provided two acquisition systems out of the four that were tested during the rally.
Pattinson told Biometric Update in an email that Thales provided the ‘Bison’ and ‘Wilson’ acquisition systems, the latter of which is the 3-camera system. The company also submitted a matching system.
The Bison system met the Rally TIR threshold of above 95 percent with nine of the ten matching systems, the most out of the four tested. That system used a single camera with a screen depicting a robot character, Pattinson says.
Corsight revealed that it contributed the matching system labelled ‘Tioga’ to the Rally, which tied for the top results across all four acquisition systems.
Pangiam also contributed a matching system to the rally with its Trueface technology. The company claims a top result for matching with three of the four acquisition systems, and across various demographics. This makes it nearly certain that the company’s alias for the Rally was ‘Mill.’
Other biometrics vendors who have participated in the past but have yet to confirm their involvement in the 2022 rally include Idemia and Rank One Computing.
Previous participant Innovatrics told Biometric Update in an email that it did not join the rally this year.
