IIT-Bombay and UIDAI join hands to develop touchless biometric system

The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) signed a memorandum of understanding with the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IIT-Bombay) on Monday, to develop a touchless biometric capture system for easier use, anytime and anywhere.

Under the MoU, UIDAI and IIT Bombay will carry out joint research to build a mobile capture system for fingerprints along with liveness model integrated with the capture system.

Once developed and operational, the touchless biometric capture system will allow fingerprint authentication from home, akin to face authentication. The new system is expected to capture multiple fingerprints at one go and improve the authentication success rate. Once in place, it will be an addition to the existing facilities available in the Aadhaar ecosystem, said a statement from PIB.

Such a system will use an intelligent combination of signal/image processing and machine learning/deep learning with a common mobile phone available to most citizens with a good user experience. This will be a step forward in making Universal authenticator a reality.

The collaboration between UIDAI and IIT Bombay through its National Centre of Excellence in Technology for Internal Security (NCETIS) will lead to joint engagement in R&D for development of a system for UIDAI.

The NCETIS is a joint initiative by IIT Bombay and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), under its flagship Digital India Programme. The NCETIS is aimed at developing indigenous technology solutions for Internal Security forces in broad areas of Electronic System Design and Manufacturing.

According to official data, UIDAI currently records 70-80 million Aadhaar authentications a day. Authentication is a process in which the Aadhaar number, along with the Aadhaar holder’s identity data such as biometric or demographic information, is submitted to UIDAI for matching. Following this, the UIDAI verifies if the number matches the Aadhaar holder’s information.

UIDAI has been rolling out new features and technology adoption for Aadhaar. This February, UIDAI launched a new security mechanism based on Artificial Intelligence for Aadhaar-based fingerprint authentication and faster detection of spoofing attempts.

The new two-factor/layer authentication has added extra checks to validate the genuineness (liveness) of the fingerprint to further cut down the chances of spoofing attempts. The UIDAI has developed the artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) based security mechanism completely in-house.

By the end of December 2022, the cumulative number of Aadhaar authentication transactions had crossed 88.29 billion and clocking an average per day transactions of 70 million. A majority of them are fingerprint-based authentications, indicative of their usage and utility in daily lives. Authentication transactions have been witnessing an upward trend and they facilitate several welfare benefits and services.