California school districts testing iris recognition system for school bus safety

Antelope Valley Schools Transportation Agency is conducting a pilot program in which it is testing an iris reader recognition solution on its special needs buses.

The IRITRANS system will alert the bus driver visibly and audibly if the child passenger is about to get on or off at the wrong bus stop.

When the bus reaches the end of its daily route, the driver ends the route on the IRITRANS mobile device.

If all students have not exited the bus, the device will notify the driver both visually and audibly to recheck the bus for any passengers.

The system is in constant communication with the district office to provide officials with real-time specific information about the bus’ passengers and location.

Other safety and security features included in IRITRANS include immediate real-time text message notification to parents when their child either boards or exits the bus, along with their time stamp.

“Lost or sleeping kids. It happens every year in most school districts nationally only we rarely hear about it,” said John DeVries, president of IRITRAK Corporation, developer of IRITRANS. “Kids left sleeping on a bus is at epidemic proportions nationally.”

AVSTA said the IRITRANS iris biometric process is non-intrusive and will have no identity security risks in the complete processes since the iris image data is not stored.

Instead, the data is encrypted which makes it impossible to be used for re-creating the identity of another individual.

AVSTA is focused on its special needs bus fleet compared to the general student fleet since it is the most difficult to address in the form of its required application.

The system requires hardware mobility from all points of the bus for loading or unloading. Additionally, the IRITRANS system eliminates many other potential emergencies that can happen during student transportation.

The implementation process will include a series of scheduled parent meetings in the event parents have any issues about the biometric process, and parents will be able to opt-out of the program if they do not want their child to participate.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  children  |  iris recognition  |  safety  |  school bus