Mouse Scans Palms to Verify ID

Fujitsu is eyeing a variation on the centuries-old art of palmistry as the latest biometric weapon against unauthorized access to computer systems and facilities. The company has developed a computer mouse that will scan the palm of the user and deliver not a look into the future but verify the identity of that person.

The mouse, which is still only a prototype, was developed by Fujitsu Laboratories researcher Masaki Watanabe as a platform to demonstrate his recently developed palm-scanner.

It works by shining an infrared light onto the palm, which illuminates the veins just under the skin, said Watanabe. The veins can be identified by the dark reflection that is returned and the scanner can then take a snapshot of the palm.

The snapshot is then matched with stored patterns of authorized users as the final stage of a process that takes less than one second to complete, according to the researcher.

To test the system, Fujitsu conducted an experiment by attempting to identify each of 700 people whose palms had previously been registered in a database and the system achieved an error rate of 0.5 percent or less, said Watanabe.

In biometric terms, Watanabe says the system offers a level of security about the same as fingerprint systems. That puts it also below iris recognition but above voice and face recognition, he said.

Fujitsu plans to commercialize the technology by the end of the current fiscal year, which runs until the end of March 2003, although it has yet to decide in what application it may first appear. The computer mouse was designed to prove and demonstrate the system and Watanabe said it may appear first in some other form, perhaps as a wall-mounted scanner for use in building access security systems.

Fujitsu is not the only company exploring biometric mice. The biometrics division of Siemens Fujitsu is not the only company exploring biometric mice. The biometrics division of Siemens showed last year an ID Mouse, which embeds a fingerprint scanner into what looks like a standard PC mouse to block access to PCs and networks.

Also, Fujitsu's researchers have been exploring other biometric security tools. In March, the company described a fingerprint sensor small enough to be used in mobile telephones. It actually scans just a portion of the finger at a time, which enables the scanner face to be tiny.