I am currently at the BTAS conference in Washington DC getting up to speed on the latest research on biometrics. Here are a few trends I have observed so far:
- an obvious lack of research on what I would call traditional biometric problems, including fingerprint matching, iris matching, and face recognition for high quality, passport style photos. These appear to be mostly solved problems.
- recognition of spoofing as a challenging problem, as is evident in the quick attacks against the iPhone 5S fingerprint sensor,
- a continuing trend to focus on challenging acquisition environments, included face photos taken at an angle (faces in the wild) and matching from video.
- more interest in different kinds of sensors, including cell phone cameras, touch pads, and the Kinect.
Here is some more information about the conference:
BTAS 2013 … is the premier research conference focused on all aspects of biometrics. It is intended to have a broad scope, including advances in fundamental signal processing, image processing, pattern recognition and statistical and mathematical techniques relevant to biometrics, new algorithms and/or technologies for biometrics, analysis of specific applications, and analysis of the social impact of biometrics technology.