More reliable than fingerprint recognition? Analysis of emerging eye pattern recognition technology

In the domestic mobile phone industry, it is not uncommon to find out about plagiarism, follow-up and patent infringement. Recently, the industry about the domestic mobile phone manufacturers VIVO and ZTE in the field of eye recognition technology is the leader who launched a fierce war of words.

As can be seen in the description of VIVO, the main feature of the eyeball recognition technology is that it can identify different living organisms by recognizing the vein pattern of the eyeball, thereby achieving high security and non-reproducibility, so even in terms of safety performance. Better than fingerprint recognition because fingerprints can be copied. The "pattern" of ZTE's eye pattern unlocking a few months ago refers to the blood vessels on the eyeball. The shape of the blood vessels on each person's eyeball is unique, even if the twins are different. Authoritative experts in the industry pointed out that both use blood vessels in the eye, and the technology is so similar. However, ZTE has made the mobile phone a few months ago, and it is self-evident.

Here, and no matter who plagiarizes us, let's take a look at what the eye mark recognition technology mentioned here is. It is reported that the eye pattern recognition technology is slightly different from the iris recognition technology we often hear. Iris recognition mainly identifies a fabric-like ring in the pupil of the eye. Each iris contains a unique image-based crown. Characteristics of features such as crystals, filaments, spots, pits, rays, wrinkles, and streaks, and eye pattern recognition is based on the shape of the blood vessels on the eyeball.

In fact, eye pattern recognition is not a new technology introduced this year. As early as 2013, EyeVerify has already exhibited their Eyeprint technology. This is the initial eye vein unlocking technology. It is from Missouri. Developed by Reza Derakhshani, an associate professor of computer science and electrical engineering at the University, it is also the co-owner of patents for eye biometrics.

At that time, the prototype used to display the technology was just an iPod Touch, not a specially customized product, so the eyeprint unlocking was not very demanding on hardware. EyeVerify said that it needed software and a minimum of 2 million. The pixel camera, of course, was the rear camera of the iPod Touch. The reason why the more convenient front lens was not used was very simple, because the front camera technology was not up to standard and it was difficult to make a clear shot.

Of course, the early technical demonstrations were not very mature, including the accuracy of recognition in use and the time taken for identification were not ideal, or there was no way to meet the consumer's requirements for unlocking mobile phones, so there was no retail product. Apply on. However, according to the research and development personnel of ZTE Tianji 3, under the joint improvement of ZTE and Eyeverify, the recognition rate and recognition time of today have a good performance, and the 1 second recognition is also the result of improvement.

It can be said that the potential of eye pattern recognition technology is very huge. As a branch of technology for identification through the eyeball, eye pattern recognition has low requirements on hardware, but eye mark information is relatively difficult to copy and unique. It has won the attention of many people and also received a investment of 10 million US dollars.

Eye pattern recognition is outstanding

In fact, the equipment and technology for eye pattern recognition is far less difficult than everyone imagined. Take ZTE Tian 3 as an example. The mobile phone is still the mobile phone. The system is still the Android system. The front camera is still the 8 megapixel front camera. The only difference is that ZTE has added a set of eye pattern recognition software for mobile phones.

The method of adding eye lines is very simple. The user only needs to point the eyes to the camera for a while, waiting for the camera to collect enough eye pattern data. The process of unlocking is also very simple. You only need to place the phone in a specific position in front of you. The visual inspection is about 10 cm away. The mobile phone can complete the unlocking process within 1 second after scanning the eye pattern.

In extreme cases, such as the user wearing contact lenses / frame glasses, glasses redness and congestion, capillary or significant meridian congestion, this has only a minimal impact on the recognition rate, according to estimates, this eye pattern recognition technology error The penalty rate is 50,000.

Then the problem is coming. If you want to fingerprint your hands, do you want to dig your eyes?

In fact, at the beginning of the eye mark recognition technology, this issue has also received considerable attention. As early as an interview in 2012, EyeVerify founder and CEO Toby Rush once said that eye pattern recognition technology can distinguish The difference between real people and photos, and at ZTE we have also obtained more improved techniques for eye and true recognition, mainly divided into active detection and 3D target detection.

The activity detection is mainly realized by analyzing the rotation of the eyeball. At the same time, through the 3D target detection, the sky camera 3 can also detect whether the current picture or video is in a three-dimensional object, and the activity detection can also distinguish whether the eyeball is active in the face. .

As for the specific implementation details, we don't have more information, and because of the time, we have not done more tests on the real eye and extreme use, so we can't answer this question for the time being. If you are interested, you may wish to pay attention. The follow-up trial articles of Netease mobile channel, we will conduct a more comprehensive test for everyone.

What are the advantages of eye mark recognition compared to other biometric technologies?

First of all, it is necessary to clarify the point that the concept of security is only relative. The security of a security technology depends on its leading degree. The higher the degree of leadership, the higher the security, and the current biometric technology is still under development. At the stage, so most of the technology is still quite safe. The author concludes that the more difficult it is to acquire biological data used as a password, and it is more difficult to copy, the higher the security, compared to the fingerprint recognition that has become popular. The biometric code required to use eye recognition technology is more difficult to obtain, so it is still safe at the moment.

Therefore, the technology based on eyeball recognition on mobile phones is relatively safer, but the eyeprint recognition that collects eyeball data is also more difficult to copy than the iris recognition. However, the advantage of the former is that it is not needed. Dedicated hardware only needs to be configured on the software, while the former requires special infrared camera and other special hardware, so the eye pattern recognition has the characteristics of being easy to promote and adopt, and the security of the two is quite similar at present. Eye pattern recognition is more commercially valuable on mobile phones in the short term.