UNILORIN Engineers Invent Biometric Machine

A team of engineers at the University
of Ilorin (UNILORIN) has produced a
prototype biometric machine that
can uniquely recognise biometric
features of Nigerians, a major
deficiency of imported machines.
The team leader, Prof. Tunji Samuel
Ibiyemi of the Electrical and
Electronics Engineering Department,
as reported by the internal organ of
the institution, said that they used
local resources to discover why
imported biometric machines cannot
adequately recognise physical
features of black people.
Ibiyemi and the three other
researchers, Prof. J. Sadiku
(Computer Science), Dr. S. A. Aliu
and Dr. I. O. Avazi (Electrical and
Electronics Engineering Department)
studied ‘Biometric Signal Processing
for Personal Application and
Forensic Application’.
Using funds provided by the World
Bank through the Science and
Technology Education Post-Basic
(STEP-B) project, the researchers
were able to produce a machine that
can detect impersonation, economic
fraud, multiple voting, examination
malpractices, rigging and solve all
kinds of security and corruption
problems for Nigeria.
Ibiyemi said foreign biometric
machines do not work optimally on
black people as they do on whites so
cannot produce the desired results.
He said: “The lack of local content in
the making of the machines we use
for vital national assignments
perhaps explain why government
efforts on projects like e-voting,
national identity card scheme,
security intelligence on criminal
citizens had not been yielding
enough fruits.
“An average Chinese recognises
Chinese people more easily.
Likewise, Americans know one
another better. When I was in
Britain, any black person could pick
any of his friend’s identity card and
go anywhere across the country
unfettered. Those working at the
airports will confirm to you that you
need local people to identify one
another.
“Most imported machines don’t
recognise tribal marks. These
machines raise alarm when they see
a masked face. But what we have
produced can recognise tribal
marks, faces that are masked and
faces that are disguised using
cosmetics.”
He said the machine can recognize
so many human-related features.
“We used machines to recognise the
human face, human iris, finger
prints, toe prints and sole prints. We
worked on speaker and speech
recognition, signature verification
and hand writing verification. What
we found is amazing. For example,
using any of these parameters, we
can get different patterns of iris,
fingerprints, toeprints, soleprints
that differentiate the 14 billion
people in the world,” he said.
Compared to foreign machines,
Ibiyemi said the one developed by
his team is cheaper and more
functional. While an Iris Scanner
from overseas cost N400,000 ($
2,500), he said a locally-made one
cost only N60, 000 to produce.
In the course of the research,
Ibiyemi said the team created a
website for biometric data on black
people – the first of its kind
worldwide – and has collected
millions of data on it.
“No website is available within Africa
for biometric data on black people.
Foreign data are populated by white
people. We needed black people’s
data to work with, so we started our
own website. We collected over one
million fingerprints, 600,000
toeprints, 200 soleprints, and 374
latent fingerprints. The website is
hosted in Italy. We also went to the
home of lepers and took 200
soleprints. When we brought them
to the laboratory, we discovered that
it is easier to recognise people
through their soleprints than
through their fingerprints,” he said.
Prof. Ibiyemi, who thanked the
Federal Government for making the
grant of $250,000 (about
N31million) available for the study,
he challenged other researchers in
the country to access available
research funds. He lamented that
out of the available $18millon STEP-
B funds, only about 10 per cent has
so far been accessed by 18
successful researchers nationwide.
http://thenationonlineng.net/new/unilorin-
dons-invent-biometric-machine/

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