Meet the biometric shoe.

[SoCalDem]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/new-lab-working-on-security-shoe-sole-to-id-people-experts-say-it-raises-privacy-questions/2012/07/21/gJQA6ZYO0W_story.html


New lab working on security shoe sole to ID people, experts say it raises privacy questions


By Associated Press, Updated: Saturday, July 21, 10:18 AM

PITTSBURGH — High-tech security? Forget those irksome digital eye scans. Meet the biometric shoe.

A new lab is working to perfect special shoe insoles that can help monitor access to high-security areas, like nuclear power plants or special military bases.


Associated Press JUL 20


The concept is based on research that shows each person has unique feet, and ways of walking. Sensors in the bio-soles check the pressure of feet, monitor gait, and use a microcomputer to compare the patterns to a master file for that person. If the patterns match the bio-soles go to sleep. If they don’t, a wireless alarm message can go out.

“It’s part of a shoe that you don’t have to think about,” said Marios Savvides, head of Carnegie Mellon University’s new Pedo-Biometrics Lab, in Pittsburgh.

The lab, which has $1.5 million in startup funding, is a partnership with Autonomous ID, a Canadian company that is relocating to several U.S. cities. Todd Gray, the company president, said he saw the potential when his daughter was in a maternity ward decorated with representations of different baby feet all along a wall.

Autonomous ID has been working on prototypes since 2009, with the goal of making a relatively low cost ID system. Gray said they’ve already run tests on sample bio-soles, which are no thicker than a common foot pad sold in pharmacies, and achieved an accuracy rate of more than 99 percent. He said Carnegie Mellon will broaden the tests to include “a full spectrum of society: big, tall, thin, heavy, athletic, multicultural, on a diet, twins and so on.”

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[Duer 157099]

1. Interesting concept

I guess this addresses the issue of people cutting off people digits to use for fingerprint access, or holding a gun to them for retinal scans. If someone were forcing someone to walk with a gun against their back, it would likely affect their gait in a detectable way.

[LiberalEsto]

2. It would certainly cut down on shoe thefts

It's time we regulated the rampant shoe crime in this country.

Remember: when shoes are outlawed, only outlaws will have shoes.

[lostnote12]

3. LoL....very observant

[SoCalDem]

5. maybe a chip that screams.. HELP Me !!

if the wrong foot's in the shoe

[Curtland1015]

6. Like a remote car starter.

The shoe just shuts off of the wrong foot tries to walk with them.

[Robb]

4. I like the idea of biometrics. Nothing to carry, the building knows you.

That said, eek.

[petronius]

7. I'd say they should work on a biometric floor instead - something that sends an alarm if the

wrong person walks on it.

I guess I don't understand how the biometric shoe controls access - the shoe recognizes if the wrong person wears it, but how do you make the unauthorized intruder put the shoe on in the first place? Perhaps the shoes are linked to motion sensors in the lab, so that a person detected moving around must also be wearing the shoes?

[BarbaRosa]

8. OK, but can you make a call?