Vein-pattern recognition is the latest technology driving China’s AI, robotics revolution
- A new world order is coming, driven by Chinese companies such as DeepBlue Technology and Yitu Technology
- Artificial intelligence, vein-pattern recognition and computer vision are already being adopted across China
Some places allow you to travel back in time; historical sites and ancient buildings can transport visitors to eras past. Four floors of a brightly lit building on Shanghai’s Weining Road do the opposite, allowing the visitor a glimpse of the future. But only if they can get inside.
DeepBlue Technology, which recently placed first in the Pacific-Asia Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining machine-learning challenge and is one of China’s most innovative robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) companies, keeps its secrets well hidden, behind closed doors. And the only way to open them is with the palm of a hand. The correct hand.
An infrared light penetrates the skin and maps what lies beneath, reading the diagram drawn by a person’s veins.
Chen Haibo, DeepBlue’s founder and chief executive, says vein-pattern-recognition technology is the safest and most accurate integrated biometric system developed to date. It is also key to many other products designed in the company’s lab.
“Our veins are unique and don’t change over time,” Chen says. “So even if you registered when you were a baby, the system will recognise you as an adult, too. External features, like fingerprints or faces, can be copied and altered and raise privacy concerns.
“On Taobao [the online shopping platform owned by Alibaba, which also owns the South China Morning Post] you can buy fingerprint and facial replication systems for about 10 yuan [US$1.5] for the fingerprint and 60 yuan or so for the face. But internal features can’t be reproduced, and even if you chop my hand off [and thus stop the blood supply], the system won’t let you in with it.”
