UIDAI claims success in Mysore study

The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has successfully verified the proof of the concept of  iris authentication in Mysore district of Karnataka.

An official release said on Monday that a combination of iris and fingerprint authentication can further the goals of universal inclusion and pave the way for successful applications based on Aadhaar authentication.

“In line with UIDAI’s successful and proven practice of conducting proof of concept (PoC) studies before launching any service, a PoC has been conducted to characterise & identify optimal authentication setups for online iris authentication,” the release said.

The PoC was conducted in semi-urban setting in Nanjangud taluk between May 27 and July 30, 2012.

A total of 2,15,342 iris authentication transactions from 5,833 residents were studied in this PoC. Eight models of iris cameras were used in this study.

For better results

The study has also brought out the specific improvement areas that biometric ecosystem needs to work upon to further improve the accuracy and coverage percentage. The detailed findings are documented in a report which is being published on UIDAI’s website, the release said.

This will be followed by a workshop with the device vendors to guide them on the specific actions to be taken by them to improve algorithms and devices.

More studies

UIDAI will then take up further field studies. These studies would also lead to the formulation of iris device specifications for certification and deployment purposes.

As a result of feedback to the biometric ecosystem, the performance of fingerprint authentication improved substantially from the time UIDAI conducted its first fingerprint authentication PoC to the last PoC.

The same is expected in the iris authentication domain too, which points that iris authentication has a scope of providing accuracy levels above 99.5 per cent, the release added.