You know that no two snowflakes are alike and that your fingerprint is unique. But did you know that the iris of your eye is also unlike any other in the world? Researchers are working on technology that can recognize the unique pattern of your iris. This could mean that one day you’ll only need to look at your front door or your computer to open it up or turn it on.
Why lift a finger to swipe an ID card when you need only look directly at the object and have it do what you want? Scientists working with the technology believe that it’ll be less than 20 years before we see this becoming a regular part of our every day lives.
One of the main problems scientists have encountered in developing the technology is that the iris of the eye is sometimes altered by a change in pupil size. Technological equipment has so far had difficulty reading these differences so different light can make the technology ineffective. New equipment can now to counteract this problem; it can predict what changes the iris would make in different light and read the iris despite the change in pupil size. (Learn more here.)
We’re already using fingerprint recognition on many of our everyday machines including personal computers. Before you know it, we could be just using our eyes to communicate with the machines around us!
