Govt ropes in IIT-Bombay to make touchless biometric capture system

The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has joined hands with IIT-Bombay to develop a robust touchless biometric capture system for easier usage anytime and anywhere, according to an official statement of the Ministry of Electronics and IT.

As part of the understanding, UIDAI and IIT Bombay will conduct joint research to build a mobile capture system for fingerprints and a liveness model integrated with the capture system. The touchless biometric capture system, once developed and operational, will allow fingerprint authentication from home like face authentication.

The new system is expected to capture multiple fingerprints at one go and aid the authentication success rate further. The new system once in place will be an addition to the existing facilities available in the Aadhaar ecosystem.

Such a system will use an intelligent combination of signal or image processing and machine learning or deep learning with a common mobile phone available to most citizens with a good user experience. This will be a step forward in making Universal Authenticator a reality.

The collaboration between UIDAI and IIT Bombay through its National Centre of Excellence in Technology for Internal Security (NCETIS) will lead to joint engagement in research and development (R&D) for the development of a system for UIDAI.

The NCETIS is a joint initiative by IIT Bombay and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), under its flagship Digital India Programme.