• Experts claim they can identify people purely by electronically sniffing them
Spanish researchers say they have developed an ‘electronic bloodhound’ that can sniff humans to prove their ID.
The research of the Group of Biometrics, Biosignals and Security (GB2S) of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) in collaboration with Ilía Sistemas SL say the system is already more than 85% accurate.
‘There are recognizable patterns of each person’s body odour that remain steady,’ the team said.
‘Therefore, every person has his/hers own odour and this would allow his/her identification within a group of people at an accurate rate higher than 85%.
‘This result leads the way to improve personal identification that is less aggressive than other biometric techniques being used today.’
The system could eventually be installed in airport to ‘sniff’ passenger as they pass through.
‘The development of new sensors that allow the capture of body odour can provide a less aggressive solution because the identification could be at the same time when crossing the system stall,’ the researchers said.
‘Nowadays, our identity verification in most airports or border checkpoints is based on our physical resemblance to our ID card or passport photo,’ they say.
‘Even though the new electronic passports are difficult to forge, the usage of biometric techniques based on a person’s physical features would increase the safety effectiveness of the border control checkpoints.
‘Several biometric techniques like the iris and fingerprint have a low error rate.
‘However, these two techniques are usually related to criminal records and for this reason when a person is required to identify himself is reticent to collaborate.
‘On the other hand, other recognized biometric techniques like the face recognition have a high error rate.’
The team say they drew their inspiration from bloodhounds that have been assisting police forces around the world.
