Keyboards to Read Your Fingerprints

New company selling low-priced fingerprint recognition teams with major PC peripheral makers.

Glenn McDonald, PC World

A new company calling itself Who? Vision Systems is teaming up with PC peripheral manufacturers to incorporate inexpensive fingerprint-recognition features into keyboards and monitors.

Headed up by former director of business development for Lucent Technologies Alex Dickenson, Who? Vision is currently working with Mag, which makes monitors and scanners, and Light On Peripherals, which makes keyboards, to embed Who? Vision fingerprint-scanning technology in their hardware.

A Mag spokesman said the company intends to ship more than 35 million units using Who? Vision technology over the next four years. A division of Mag called Spot Technology is developing a stand-alone fingerprint-recognition unit that can be plugged into a PC%squots serial port. None of the companies has announced when they expect their products to hit stores.

The Who? Vision fingerprint scanners use a new technology called TactileSense which is less expensive and more accurate than current fingerprint technologies, Dickenson said. TactileSense uses a heat-sensitive polymer surface to read the electronic field between the ridges and valleys of a fingerprint. This is superior to optical fingerprint scanners, which can be fooled by a plastic mold of a fingerprint, Dickenson said.

The technology is inexpensive, Dickenson said. %dquotCurrently, it would add about $50 to the price of a monitor. And that price will come down within about three years. Down the line, this could feasibly be worked into cell phones, mice and PDAs.%dquot

The TactileSense units will ship with their own software interface, which includes a password bypass option. Dickenson said he is also planning to approach other software and operating systems providers.

%dquotWith this kind of thing, you have to bring the hardware and the software together,%dquot he said. %dquotWe%squotre going to Microsoft to try to get it into the Windows OS.%dquot