Face recognition system helps Canadians get motorcycle license online
18 July, 2014
category: Biometrics, Digital ID
Face recognition technology is enabling motorcycle riders in Canada to get a license from the comfort of their home.
When MSI Motorcycle Safety Institute rolled out an online system for folks to take courses and get a motorcycle license, the Canadian government asked for verification that the online students were who they claimed to be.
So MSI hired KeyLemon, a creator of biometric ID and motion analysis solutions. “They’re utilizing what we refer to as our web service, which is a cloud-based implementation of our face recognition technology,” says Anthony Gioeli, voce president of sales and marketing at KeyLemon. “Our web service is hosted at Amazon Web Services. Through an API, anybody can integrate our facial recognition into their app, whether it’s logging into a system or logging into online education. It’s a very simple implementation.”
MSI began using the system this week. It works on any device – laptop, smartphone, tablet – with Internet and a web cam. As part of the registration process, the web cam takes a series of pictures of the student. “From there it extracts the unique aspects of the person’s face, and it creates what’s called a template. That template is then tied to that student’s username,” Gioeli says. “To log in to the course, you’re looking at the webcam and it’s taking snapshots of you, and it’s extracting again the unique aspects of your face, and then it’s comparing it to a template that’s stored for that student.”
For those who prefer not to deal with pictures, the company recently rolled out a voice biometric. “It’s not speech recognition, translating your words,” says Gioeli. “It’s taking, shall we say, the fingerprint of our voice and comparing it to, again, a previously stored template.”
KeyLemon introduced the face recognition system half a year ago. It has users around the world, including AmeriTech College in the US. It can be used with or without passwords.