Finger-vein terminals point way toward city innovation drive
Print Edition
When administrators at Haneda Airport in Tokyo, Japan decided recently to buy several new finger-vein identification machines for administrative and security-control use, they didn’t turn to local giants like Hitachi or Fujitsu. Instead, they approached Shanghai Ogis Tonghua Software Co Ltd, located in Changning District.
“Finger-vein identification is not a very new technology but we made a computer terminal that is small and features lots of functions. It’s fast and has great storage,” Shao Meng, head of the company’s innovation department, tells Shanghai Daily.
According to Shao, Japan is widely acknowledged as a leader in finger-vein identification technology, a form of biometrics where the unique vein pattern in a person’s finger is used to authenticate their identity. This can be done in less than a second via devices like those designed by Shanghai Ogis, which are now roughly the size of a credit-card payment terminal.
As Shao elaborates, Japanese firms excel when it comes to producing the components which go into such devices. But as for the devices themselves, Shao says those made by Shanghai Ogis “can’t be beaten in terms of quality and technology.”
The Changning-based company is now producing its third-generation of finger-vein identification terminal, which is said to be the product of its own independent research and development.
Looking at its first-generation terminal, which it rolled out only some seven years ago, it’s not hard to see how far the company has come. This first reader was roughly as tall as a human being. Its latest readers though can easily fit in ones hand. What’s more, these smaller machines can identify an individual’s identity within one second. They can also store 12,000 unique vein samples.
As many see it, finger-vein technology is the wave of the future when it comes to biometric identification. According to its proponents, such technology is more accurate than fingerprint reading and much harder for fraudsters to overcome.
“People think fingerprint identification is safe, but — as with most common technologies — the truth is that it’s not,” says Shao.
For instance, Shao explains that many current smartphone models with fingerprint-reading touchscreens are easier to compromise than most people realize.
“Since your fingerprints can be found everywhere, copying and stealing them is simple. Thieves can use a sticker to copy your fingerprints and then create a mould which can access your smartphone,” he explains, adding that many fingerprint reading devices can be fooled with similar techniques.
Another major flaw with such devices is that, for some people, they simply don’t work.
“If you observe, people who do lots of manual work like housewives or factory workers, they have really faint fingerprints. Machines sometimes cannot identify them.”
Shao offered statistics to show that about 5 percent of the population cannot be identified through fingerprinting, which creates a major “blind spot” in the use of such technology.
In comparison, vein-recognition devices are both more effective and much harder to fool with moulds or non-living objects. This is because the veins are below the epidermis and inside the finger, where they are part of the circulatory system. It is this unique system that is scanned, and later confirmed, via infrared rays in finger-vein terminals.
Xu Yan, the manager and founder of Shanghai Ogis used to work in Fujitsu’s research lab. In 2008, Xu came back to Shanghai to start his own business.
At first, his company mainly handled projects outsourced from other companies. It wasn’t long though before Shanghai Ogis was also operating its own R&D department with a ten member staff.
“One day, we took an outsourcing job for a Japanese vein-identification company. It intrigued us enough to start creating our own products,” Shao explains.
Getting to their current position though was not easy for the fledgling company. Indeed, its path of development was hampered by several instances of failure.
“Our second-generation vein-identification reader was brushed aside without even appearing on the market,” says Shao. While smaller than its first product, the second-generation reader was plagued by overheating issues which made it unusable.
“It was not an easy problem to solve as we needed to add a fan to the machine to make it functional again. The whole system, design and structure had to be altered. So we had to start over,” Shao adds.
Looking ahead, the company says one of its biggest challenges will be seeing how its latest terminals perform in real-world conditions.
“In Japan, we have enough resources to run tests in various extreme situations, but it’s hard for a small company like us to do so. But we are trying our best and still perfecting our third-generation of vein-identification machine,” Shao says.
Another challenge facing the company is fostering and retaining talent. “To cultivate a technician takes a lot of effort and so does keeping them in the company. Many people leave for higher salaries or more interesting work, like game designing, after working here for a few years. So a small company like ours needs to really think about how to realize the value of young workers, while also encouraging them to have faith in our company,” Shao explains.
As for the company’s future products, Shao says he and his team hope to create a vein-identification terminal that can connect with the country’s social-security system. Ideally, such a machine would allow people to access their insurance information quickly and conveniently when they go to the hospital. “To bring more convenience to people when they see the doctor, that’s what we’ve always wanted to do,” he says.
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