[Applause]
[Music]
our identity have been very important to
us ever since we were very young from a
psychological perspective the social
perspective the philosophical
perspective and the spiritual
perspective today though I will restrict
myself to the dictionary definition of
identity which is for example who
someone is what is the name and in
particular I’d like to discuss the
identity of infants and toddlers who may
not even have a name yet just like this
child that we have in the photograph who
was known by the name of her mother
we know the gender the date of birth and
the approximate age the United Nations
has mandated that every child shall be
registered immediately after birth and
shall have the right from birth to a
name the right to acquire a nationality
as far as possible and the right to know
and be cared for by his or her parents
now this is not a recent UN Charter this
is from the UN Convention in 1989 which
is nearly 30 years ago now but
unfortunately we have an astounding
number of 40% of child births in India
still unregistered which leads to a lot
of problems such as child trafficking
child labor denial a formal job denial
of bank account denial of driver’s
license marriage certificate Passport
everything needs a birth certificate now
so 40 percent of the population
therefore really remains deprived of a
lot of benefits there are several ways
in which identity can be asserted for
example something that we own possession
base such as the key to a home or a
token what an ID card like this
or something that we know some secret
knowledge for example our email
passwords but the problem with both
possession based and knowledge-based
authentication is is these they can be
stolen what they can be shared so one
perhaps better form of identification is
biometric authentication biometric
authentication also has a lot of other
benefits especially for an infant in
children for example we have vaccination
cards but a lot of parents of infants
who are really marginalized do not
really always know the value of carrying
these cards but if we have a registry
where all of these children are
registered we can track vaccinations
backtrack which is a nonprofit
organization claims that more than 50%
of the vaccines worldwide go wasted now
that is not only a monetary waste but
that also means that a lot of needy
population whom these vaccines can
really help never get the benefit of the
vaccines that are actually available
there are of course other applications
for example preventing newborn baby
swabs so we read in the newspapers often
that either intentionally or
unintentionally children got swamped in
the hospital now if these children’s
identities were somehow biometrically
linked to that of their parents we could
immediately find out whether or not
there has been a swap identifying
missing children even in the most
developed economies such as the United
States over 800,000 children go missing
every year which is like one child
missing every 40 seconds our country the
rate of missing children is even worse
so for example when you look at this
child who’s begging on the streets of
the city the question not is not really
whether or not we should help them
financially but the question is the
bigger question is how can we connect
them back to their parents it is quite
possible that the child was kidnapped
when they were really young they do not
even probably recognize their parents
now but if we had a biometric registry
we could authenticate them and then
connect them back with their parents
then of course there are national
identification programs now the problem
with biometric authentication is is that
so far it was really unknown whether
children who are really young can we
authenticate them using biometrics is
that biometric pattern that we use is
that persistent over time that question
was answered so national ID programs
such as one of the largest ones in the
world which is the other program in
India does not capture biometric rates
until 5 years of age and then the
biometrics have to be registered once
the child turns 15 but given so many
benefits of being able to identify
children positively based on their
biometrics we were motivated to take up
the study with one of the finest
biometric research groups in the world
professor Jane’s lab at Michigan State
University so we took longitudinal
fingerprint study ranging for over a
year with the Dei is affiliated hospital
the Sirah National Hospital as a partner
and also NEC cooperation as an as a
corporate partner
and we with the help of the hospital the
maternity ward there we could capture
fingerprints of children who were just a
few hours old
to be able to see if we are able to get
those fingerprints and if those
fingerprints persist over time these are
some of our example subjects like you
can say see the face images are not
really persistent with time especially
with with young children and so
therefore fingerprint was a viable
option now the other problem is that the
fingerprint readers that are generally
available in the market are 512 dpi
which is to say that there are finer in
12 points or 500 points every hinge now
that is good for adults
would it work for infants though do
infants really have fingerprints the
answer is yes they do
even in gestation even before they are
born the fingerprints are developed it’s
just a question of technology it’s just
because those fingerprints are so small
that we do not have technology yet to be
able to get those fingerprints high
quality and then be able to faithfully
identify the child
so therefore with some hardware improve
improvisation especially with the help
of NEC cooperation a higher resolution
fingerprint scanner was developed and
like you can see the fingerprint of the
same child on the left using a 500 PPI
commercial scanner versus the newly
developed 1026 270 PPI scanner the
fingerprint quality is is exceptionally
good and with this and some
improvisations in fingerprint matching
algorithms we were able to achieve 100%
accuracy for all children over 12 months
of age
[Applause]
thank you so we are continuing this work
now and even though the fingerprint
reader is able to capture fingerprints
at a higher resolution we also want a
matcher that can go into remote and
tribal areas and so therefore we are
using Raspberry Pi based fingerprint
reader again in collaboration with
Michigan State University and you can
see that this is on the screen you can
see some pictures of sort of a frugal
innovation where we have a cardboard
base fingerprint reader using a simple
glass prism which through total internal
reflection creates an image which is
captured by a very simple camera and can
be matched using the Raspberry Pi
because it’s also a small computer in
itself and now with the focus on
children that are less than 12 months
old you can see them images that we get
using this new setup for children who
are even younger than 12 months are
fairly good the idea is that we would
want to identify children starting right
at birth
ours is not the first effort there have
been other efforts in the past to be
able to tell tell children apart so
that’s a possible solution too but
unfortunately that’s not scalable we are
talking of the size of national
populations and eventually we want to be
able to get to a point where technology
both in hardware and software is to a
point where we are able to reliably
authenticate everyone using their
biometrics the final goal is that let no
child be deprived of the benefits that come with their identity thank you
[Music]
our identity have been very important to
us ever since we were very young from a
psychological perspective the social
perspective the philosophical
perspective and the spiritual
perspective today though I will restrict
myself to the dictionary definition of
identity which is for example who
someone is what is the name and in
particular I’d like to discuss the
identity of infants and toddlers who may
not even have a name yet just like this
child that we have in the photograph who
was known by the name of her mother
we know the gender the date of birth and
the approximate age the United Nations
has mandated that every child shall be
registered immediately after birth and
shall have the right from birth to a
name the right to acquire a nationality
as far as possible and the right to know
and be cared for by his or her parents
now this is not a recent UN Charter this
is from the UN Convention in 1989 which
is nearly 30 years ago now but
unfortunately we have an astounding
number of 40% of child births in India
still unregistered which leads to a lot
of problems such as child trafficking
child labor denial a formal job denial
of bank account denial of driver’s
license marriage certificate Passport
everything needs a birth certificate now
so 40 percent of the population
therefore really remains deprived of a
lot of benefits there are several ways
in which identity can be asserted for
example something that we own possession
base such as the key to a home or a
token what an ID card like this
or something that we know some secret
knowledge for example our email
passwords but the problem with both
possession based and knowledge-based
authentication is is these they can be
stolen what they can be shared so one
perhaps better form of identification is
biometric authentication biometric
authentication also has a lot of other
benefits especially for an infant in
children for example we have vaccination
cards but a lot of parents of infants
who are really marginalized do not
really always know the value of carrying
these cards but if we have a registry
where all of these children are
registered we can track vaccinations
backtrack which is a nonprofit
organization claims that more than 50%
of the vaccines worldwide go wasted now
that is not only a monetary waste but
that also means that a lot of needy
population whom these vaccines can
really help never get the benefit of the
vaccines that are actually available
there are of course other applications
for example preventing newborn baby
swabs so we read in the newspapers often
that either intentionally or
unintentionally children got swamped in
the hospital now if these children’s
identities were somehow biometrically
linked to that of their parents we could
immediately find out whether or not
there has been a swap identifying
missing children even in the most
developed economies such as the United
States over 800,000 children go missing
every year which is like one child
missing every 40 seconds our country the
rate of missing children is even worse
so for example when you look at this
child who’s begging on the streets of
the city the question not is not really
whether or not we should help them
financially but the question is the
bigger question is how can we connect
them back to their parents it is quite
possible that the child was kidnapped
when they were really young they do not
even probably recognize their parents
now but if we had a biometric registry
we could authenticate them and then
connect them back with their parents
then of course there are national
identification programs now the problem
with biometric authentication is is that
so far it was really unknown whether
children who are really young can we
authenticate them using biometrics is
that biometric pattern that we use is
that persistent over time that question
was answered so national ID programs
such as one of the largest ones in the
world which is the other program in
India does not capture biometric rates
until 5 years of age and then the
biometrics have to be registered once
the child turns 15 but given so many
benefits of being able to identify
children positively based on their
biometrics we were motivated to take up
the study with one of the finest
biometric research groups in the world
professor Jane’s lab at Michigan State
University so we took longitudinal
fingerprint study ranging for over a
year with the Dei is affiliated hospital
the Sirah National Hospital as a partner
and also NEC cooperation as an as a
corporate partner
and we with the help of the hospital the
maternity ward there we could capture
fingerprints of children who were just a
few hours old
to be able to see if we are able to get
those fingerprints and if those
fingerprints persist over time these are
some of our example subjects like you
can say see the face images are not
really persistent with time especially
with with young children and so
therefore fingerprint was a viable
option now the other problem is that the
fingerprint readers that are generally
available in the market are 512 dpi
which is to say that there are finer in
12 points or 500 points every hinge now
that is good for adults
would it work for infants though do
infants really have fingerprints the
answer is yes they do
even in gestation even before they are
born the fingerprints are developed it’s
just a question of technology it’s just
because those fingerprints are so small
that we do not have technology yet to be
able to get those fingerprints high
quality and then be able to faithfully
identify the child
so therefore with some hardware improve
improvisation especially with the help
of NEC cooperation a higher resolution
fingerprint scanner was developed and
like you can see the fingerprint of the
same child on the left using a 500 PPI
commercial scanner versus the newly
developed 1026 270 PPI scanner the
fingerprint quality is is exceptionally
good and with this and some
improvisations in fingerprint matching
algorithms we were able to achieve 100%
accuracy for all children over 12 months
of age
[Applause]
thank you so we are continuing this work
now and even though the fingerprint
reader is able to capture fingerprints
at a higher resolution we also want a
matcher that can go into remote and
tribal areas and so therefore we are
using Raspberry Pi based fingerprint
reader again in collaboration with
Michigan State University and you can
see that this is on the screen you can
see some pictures of sort of a frugal
innovation where we have a cardboard
base fingerprint reader using a simple
glass prism which through total internal
reflection creates an image which is
captured by a very simple camera and can
be matched using the Raspberry Pi
because it’s also a small computer in
itself and now with the focus on
children that are less than 12 months
old you can see them images that we get
using this new setup for children who
are even younger than 12 months are
fairly good the idea is that we would
want to identify children starting right
at birth
ours is not the first effort there have
been other efforts in the past to be
able to tell tell children apart so
that’s a possible solution too but
unfortunately that’s not scalable we are
talking of the size of national
populations and eventually we want to be
able to get to a point where technology
both in hardware and software is to a
point where we are able to reliably
authenticate everyone using their
biometrics the final goal is that let no
child be deprived of the benefits that come with their identity thank you
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