soft biometrics

Researcher(s): Yang Cai, Raj Rajkumar, Howard Lipson

Research Area: Access to Devices and Spaces

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Abstract

Soft Biometrics are the human characteristics that include information such as gender, eye color, ethnicity, age, height, weight,length of arms and legs, proportion, gait, gestures and voice. Those soft biometric traits are usually easier to capture from a distance and do not require cooperation from the subject. They are descriptors that can be presented in video surveillance reports. Studies show that the combination of soft biometric characteristics can help the security agent to conduct rapid screens from real-time online sensors or very large video databases. Soft biometrics technology is not a replacement of existing biometric systems but it can complement and improve the performance of common biometric systems (e.g. signature verification, face recognition, fingerprint identification, iris recognition.)