Can you travel around the world with just a stretch of your hand? Palm recognition is more useful than face recognition!

□ Popular Science Times reporter Chen Jie

Stretch out your palm and aim it at the scanner. With a "beep", the green light comes on and the verification is passed...Recently, on Chongqing Rail Transit Line 18, many experiencers are trying out the smart city rail transit automatic ticket vending and checking system (AFC) that integrates palm vein recognition technology. This smart device is jointly created by Intel and ecological partners such as Yumai Technology. Users only need to "swipe their palms" to complete identity recognition and pay for tickets.

"In daily life, face recognition and fingerprint recognition have always been the most widely used biometric technologies, but there are often problems such as damaged fingerprints that cannot be recognized and slow recognition of faces modified with makeup." Wang Chao, a researcher at Wenyuan Think Tank, told Science Times that the "palm swiping" application based on palm vein recognition technology has been the new darling in the field of biometric recognition in the past two years and is leading the trend of technological development.

Application scenarios continue to expand

"Compared with traditional entry verification methods, palm vein feature recognition is more efficient and can effectively solve problems such as unstable mobile phone network and low-battery shutdown that may exist in technologies such as QR code recognition." Xie Qingshan, an Intel official, told reporters that the application of palm vein recognition technology in the transportation field means that the technology is becoming more mature.

In addition to municipal application scenarios, palm vein recognition has also been more deeply applied in the field of smart security that is closer to public life. Recently, the smart lock brand Shideman released another iterative product after releasing a number of palm vein smart door locks last year. Looking at the entire domestic smart door lock market, all mainstream brands have basically launched palm vein products, and the market also shows a trend of strong supply and demand.

Sang Shengwei, director of the Shideman Technology R&D Center, told reporters that fingerprint recognition smart door locks are the most popular among users, but they also have many disadvantages, such as the shallow fingerprints of the elderly and children, and seasonal peeling of some people, which may cause problems with fingerprint recognition. "Compared to fingerprints, palm veins are highly secure and stable enough in actual use, which is a relatively ideal solution."

As early as May last year, WeChat released the "Palm Swipe Payment" function, which was successfully applied on the Beijing Metro Daxing Airport Line. Industry insiders believe that WeChat's "palm print + palm vein" recognition technology can effectively solve the payment needs of "no media", "non-contact", "high convenience" and "high security", and provide users with more choices in biometric recognition.

In the digital age, biometric recognition technology is becoming more and more diversified. In just a few years, palm vein recognition has become the "guardian" of various smart application scenarios, ensuring that technology brings convenience to life while also protecting the safety of users.

More safety advantages

Palm vein recognition is based on the physiological characteristics of the human body. It is not easy to wear, stable, and difficult to forge. It uses the principle of near-infrared light reflection for non-contact recognition. Users only need to hold their palms up in the air to complete identity authentication, greatly improving recognition efficiency and security.

Compared with face and fingerprint recognition, palm vein recognition does not directly store the original image data, but extracts feature information through a special algorithm model and performs unique obfuscation encryption processing on it.

"Figuratively speaking, the protection of palm vein data is like dividing a piece of paper into 256 independent modules and storing them separately." Wang Tianming, founder of Yumai Technology, told reporters that even if the database is attacked and data is leaked, the attacker will only get a pile of "fragments of paper" that cannot be pieced together and cannot form complete image information.

In addition, palm veins have a natural anti-counterfeiting advantage. Zhao Qijun, a professor at the School of Computer Science at Sichuan University who has been engaged in biometric technology research for a long time, said that palm veins are rich in blood vessels and are unique, with higher accuracy and recognition rate. "Compared with palm prints, fingerprints and facial features, palm veins are hidden under the skin of the palm, and must be live, so they are not easy to forge. In addition, there is no need to contact the skin during identification, and it is not affected by light or skin, making it more convenient to use."

It is precisely based on these advantages that palm vein recognition is catching up in the competition with face and fingerprint recognition.

"With giants such as Tencent and Alibaba all deploying 'palm-swiping' recognition, I believe it won't be long before a large number of subway gates, convenience stores, campus canteens, stadiums and other places will be able to complete offline payments, access control recognition, security checks and other functions just by extending their hands," said Wang Chao.