You can’t say ear recognition has not gotten a fair hearing

The ear is the vice president of biometric identification. It probably is up to the task, but with so many other interesting options….

Biometrics researchers at the University of Georgia are making the latest pitch that ears can do more than hold up glasses and masks. Previous research dates back at least to the middle of the last century.

In a research report, the team says they can authenticate people by their ears up to 99 percent of the time.

“Ear recognition is just another exciting modality that we need to start talking more about due to its benefits, despite the understandable challenges of self-capturing an ear image,” according to Thirimachos Bourlai, an associate professor at the school’s College of Engineering. He was quoted in a school marketing publication.

Ear images in the lab were saved on a mobile device the same as face and fingerprint biometrics.

The scientists ran tests of their code, getting the best result – 99 percent accuracy – using the DenseNet deep CNN model.

The researchers argue that ear biometrics advantages include being passive, contactless, non-intrusive, and expressionless.

Apple filed for a patent this year on a biometric anti-eavesdropper app for its AirPods. The company realized that anyone could spot AirPods lying around, linked to an Apple device, and push the devices into their own ear canals to hear private information.

The patent document describes how a presumably unheard signal would be sent out of each headphone to bounce around the owner’s unique biometric ear-canal print.

Amazon was awarded a U.S. patent in 2015 for ear recognition that scans the user’s ear to unlock the device when holding it up to the ear to answer a call.

Article Topics

biometric identification  |  biometrics  |  biometrics research  |  ear recognition