A group of eight people, including all members of one Florida family, had an implant chip, roughly the size of a grain of rice, injected under their skin on Friday, May 10. Manufactured by Applied Digital Solutions (ADS), the chips store a special identification number that enables the retrieval of personal and medical information. In the event of a medical emergency, a special handheld scanner...

Professor John Daugman of the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory is the author of this paper on iris recognition. It examines the characteristics of the human iris from a statistical perspective in order to estimate the requirements for accurate identification. Many complex issues of pattern recognition are addressed, such as the problems of isolating the iris and maintaining accuracy...

Biometrics technology can take on many forms, but, in general, it is defined as the automated identification of a person based on physiological or behavioral characteristics. The topic has gained considerable attention lately, because it can be a tool for airport surveillance or national security. To learn the basics of biometrics, try the overview given on a Michigan State University Web site (1...

A wealth of information about RFID is available at this site (1), ranging from background material to case studies. A discussion highlighting the myriad of uses for RFID is included. Transponder News (2) offers several articles that explore the technology in greater detail. Two in particular look at current and future trends, while others are editorial essays and technical notes. Pacific Northwest...

ThumbPod is an embedded system being designed at the University of California at Los Angeles to process fingerprint information. It will be biometrically secure, and hence will have applications in credit card transactions, secure data storage, and any area that requires identity verification. This research paper, presented at the Design Automation Conference in June 2003, describes the design...

The Georgia Institute of Technology is conducting research on Human Identification at a Distance, with an emphasis on gait recognition. Supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the project's development of gait recognition systems and algorithms is "an example of an activity-specific biometric: a method of extracting some identifying properties of an individual or of an...