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Wednesday July 25, 2007
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Pink Tentacle, tipsters of all things odd from Asia and elsewhere, have an interesting writeup today on an emerging technology from Hitachi that may one day replace your credit card with a quick scan of the pattern of blood vessels in your finger. Finger vein authentication technology is better than using fingerprints, because it's much harder to counterfeit. And potential baddies please take note: A severed finger would have no blood, and thus be useless.
A three month field test is set to kick off in September with 200 Hitachi employees and shops in the Hitachi System Plaza Building in Kawasaki, Japan. The vein readers in-store will use infrared LEDs and a "special camera" to capture a complex image of vein structure, format it, and check it against the image on file. If things go well, Hitachi plans to expand the test to all of its buildings.
As Pink Tentacle points out, this technology could one day make credit cards, and all the worries about losing them, disappear from our lives for good. And credit card company JCB is looking to get in on the ground floor by "cooperating" with the trial. Of course, Hitachi might want to retool the name before they bring it to the Western world though, because "Finger Vein Money" is bound to give someone the wrong idea. And when that someone slices open their finger, only to find plain old blood inside, you know they're going to call a lawyer.
[Image via Pink Tentacle]
Post by Matt Safford
Posted By:
Gearlog
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