Techniques to determine and verify the identity of a person are well-known. Law enforcement and criminal investigations often require positive identification of an individual. This can be done from positive identification mechanisms such as a photograph, fingerprinting, voice scanning, handwriting, DNA testing, or other similar technique. Positive identification techniques cannot identify an individual without an initial profiling step. Typically, an individual is photographed, fingerprinted or blood tested for that profiling.
Surveillance cameras are also commonly used to maintain photographic monitoring of various locations.
Since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, heightened security measures have come into effect. The Homeland security act of 2001, for example, enabled law enforcement agents to arrest, detain, search and fingerprint individuals at random. It is also commonplace for public buildings to require certain security procedures prior to entry. Higher security areas, such as airports, federal buildings, public arenas and exhibition areas, have a higher level of scrutiny.
The technique of choice for identification of individuals remains fingerprinting, probably because of the depth of the fingerprint databases which correlate the individual fingerprints to individual identities. More recently, a DNA database has also been used to identify individual DNA profiles. These techniques may be used at a crime scene, to analyze individual aspects left behind.
Different kinds of body scanners are known. External type body scanners such as metal detectors can detect a user holding some kind of metal item. Internal devices such as MRI, CAT scan or ultrasound have also been used to view inside a person's body, usually for the purpose of detecting medical conditions.
The present disclosure describes techniques which can be used to recognize individual body characteristics with or without a template to which to compare those body characteristics. Profiling of individuals is discussed. One aspect allows monitoring individual movements, without specific identification of specified individuals, but correlates characteristics of individuals to other similarly determined characteristics.
Profiling of those body characteristics is also described. One aspect of this system allows effective use in real-time to monitor individual identities. No sample or body part is required.
These and other aspects will now be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings, wherein:
Many of the previous used identification techniques have relied on known individual characteristics of users. The present technique makes use of distinguishing differences between individuals. There are many recognizable features of individuals. These features allow one person to recognize another, from front, back, or side. For example, even the silhouette of a known person under cover of darkness is often sufficiently distinguishable to allow determination of the person's identity. These personal characteristics are obtained and used for monitoring. The personal characteristics themselves are monitored, and the specific identity corresponding to those characteristics need not be determined prior to the monitoring.
The present system can enable automatically monitoring those characteristics, to determine where the person with those characteristics, known or unknown, has been in recent past. For example, a person can be determined to have been in the airport facility in 10 different cities and 11 banks in the last three weeks. This enables maintaining a profile of the person's movements. The identity corresponding to that person can be known or unknown. Moreover, all of this can be easily done without the person's knowledge and consent, since no previous model of person or looks is necessary. According to the present system, it is only necessary for the current data to be compared to other similarly obtained data.
One application of the present techniques is for use in egress or ingress to some area. For example, this can be used to control access to a government installation or facility, to an airport, or to any high security facility. The detection system is hidden in various locations. Employees go about their regular duties. Their passage in certain locations is detected. The data is compared against employee profiles, and any un-recognized profile is signaled as an unauthorized presence.
In one aspect, the user is profiled, and identified as being an authorized user. As the user passes through various areas such as halls and doorways, they can be monitored by this system. Surreptitious monitoring is possible as described herein. Importantly, uniforms, disguises, and the like will not confuse the monitoring. Facial hair, and other hair color etc. also will not confuse this system.
Another aspect of the system enables profiling ethnic groups by race and gender for access screening purposes. The system may be used for law enforcement, crowd control, monitoring, typing and tracking of the suspects.
This system may use low-level microwave energy as is described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/751208 which is herein incorporated by reference. The system can illuminate the subject from one side 104 with radiation, as well as from above or from some other angle. Using the analogy of an electric incandescent bulb which casts a shadow on the wail, a receiving array 105 receives the virtual silhouette of the subject. Both transmitting and receiving arrays may include a plurality of miniature focused antennas, such as parabolic antennas 104, 105. The data profile is received as the user passes between the sending and receiving antennas. In one aspect, an array of microsized antennas are used, each transmitting antenna is focused towards a specified receiving antenna. Each transmitting and receiving antenna pair effectively forms a “pixel” of a final received “image”. That “image” is then characterized. Alternatively, other kinds of radiation can be used to characterize the individual.
One important aspect of the system is that it is susceptible of being hidden in various different ways. The system may be used for screening access doors and corridors without being noticed by the people being screened.
According to the embodiment, a transmitting array 104 is formed of antennas hidden behind a wallpaper or fabric covering 106. The transmitting array 104 is powered by electronics 108 would drive the transmitter. Analogously, a receiver array 120 is located on the opposite side of the door jam. Each element of the receiver array receives microwave information from a corresponding transmitter, unless interrupted by the passage of a subject. A controller element is responsive to the data received by the receiving array, and forms a profile based on the data it receives from the receiving array. That profile is indicative of specific characteristics of an individual.
Resolution may be increased by using a higher frequency microwave signal. In one aspect, therefore, a signal above 150 GHz may be preferred. Since the wavelength of the 150 GHz signal is approximately 2 mm, this may provide a resolution of about 1 mm overall of the individual's characteristics. Each antenna may be a parabolic antenna with ½-25 mm diameter. The size of the individual antennas sets the pixel size of the points, so a smaller antenna may provide more resolution. The antennas may also be printed on a circuit board, or formed in silicon or using micromachining techniques.
The microwave energy can be used over a number of different distances. In one embodiment, there may be less than 4 feet between the transmitting array and the receiving array. In this embodiment, the output power may be extremely low, e.g. below the accepted environmental norm level of 10 mW per centimeter square. This low power and invisibility of the system makes this system very useful for various purposes.
Another set of transmitting/receiving antennas 130, 131 may illuminate the subject and detect information from a different angle.
According to different aspects of this system, the microwave may be used to illuminate the subject's head, torso, spinal curvature, bone structure, nose, neckline curvature and/or profile or other direction. The information may be used to identify an individuals data and the data used for monitoring of various types. The monitoring may include following whereabouts without being required to identify an individual, or for profiling such as race or gender profiling in locations. For example, different ethnic groups have different physical characteristics, and males have different characteristics than females. This system may be used to profile the kinds of people that enter a location.
AC power 200 is input to a power supply 205, that receives the AC power 200, and forms different kinds of power which are used by the subassemblies. A microwave oscillator 210 is powered by the power supply 205. The microwave oscillator 210 also drives a microwave mixer 215. The output of the microwave mixer 215 is multiplexed by a multiplexer 220, to an interface 225. Interface 225 drives the output connections 230, which leads to a cable array 235. The cable array 235 carries a plurality of different outputs, the different outputs respectively being coupled to the respective antennas in the transmitting array. The transmitting array 240 includes a plurality of different miniature parabolic antennas completely filling a space defining the space to be monitored. Each of the different antennas may be located such that the edges of one antenna are pressed against edges of all the neighboring antennas, thereby completely filling the space within which the array can be located. In the embodiment, the array may be for example 9-50 antennas tall, and may be between 15 and 250 antennas wide. Each transmitting antenna transmits focused microwave.
The transmitting antennas preferably encompass an area which transmits microwave over the location from a user's torso to the top of the user's head. For example, this may cover the area between 2½ feet from the floor, and 6½ feet from the floor, to acquire data from all desired parts of 95% of the population.
An array of receiving antennas is located facing the transmitting antennas, so that each receiving antenna is pointed at a specific transmitting antenna. The receiving antenna array is similarly sized to the transmitting array, and also covered by a fabric covering.
Support legs 241, 242 may hold up the antenna arrays; or alternatively the antenna array may be mounted on a wall, which holds up the antenna array. As previously discussed, a fabric covering may cover the antenna.
The entire operation is controlled by the controller 250, which may be a microcontroller or suitably programmed processor. The controller 250 may operate to control the transmission and reception, and to form data indicative thereof.
The system may operate as shown in
The information may be compared to other sets of information to either recognize or correlate the sets against other sets, or may simply be stored with the subject at 325. This completes the operation of the scanner, and consequently the scanner goes into the standby mode at 330. The data may then be transferred to the central database server at 340.
The central database server maintains a master file of subjects, allowing maintaining surveillance of their movements. At 345 the data is categorized to include location, date, time and any other classification. When used for access control, this will detect an unauthorized person being in an unauthorized location. This issues a code red alert causing central control to notify law enforcement of the breach to access at 360 allowing law enforcement to apprehend 365.
Analogously, the neck statistics may be obtained including length; diameter; neck to head ratio; curve of Adams Apple.
The torso 420 is also categorized according to overall length; width at centerline; curvature of stomach; fat ratios; torso type; where the torso type can be one of a number of different types shown here as stick, spoon, wedge, pear, but of course the torso may be other kinds of shapes also. Finally, spinal curvature is assessed as part of the torso parameters.
The waist 430 is analyzed to obtain diameter; hip length; curvature of hip; curvature of pelvis; angle of hip.
Doorway 501 includes an array of transmitting antennas 502 driven by the transmitting electronics 504 and an array of receiving antennas 510. The information received by the receiving antennas is processed by a receiver 515 which includes a processor therein. In one aspect, each transmitting antenna may be pointed directed at another antenna in the receiving array.
This can allow analyzing and determining the shape of the person based specifically on which antennas received and transmitted at any given time. The antennas may all transmit at the same time, or may transmit in time bursts, with reception also timed to the same time bursts. The processor analyzes which transmissions it has received at which time, and produces an output 516 based thereon. The output may simply be raw data, and is sent by controller transmitter 520 over a common network 530. The network may be a secure network, may be the Internet, or may be a telephone line. In the case of using a public network, the data may be encrypted prior to sending.
Similarly, this system may be located in a number of different doorways.
The data over network 530 is processed by the controller 535 in the central database server 550. The controller analyzes the data to attempt to determine a match between this data and previously obtained data. A master database file 555 is maintained, which may include information for each of the plurality of different persons. That information may include the time and location when the person has been at different areas.
Importantly, a person need not be individually identified. When specified statistics are obtained, that set of statistics becomes a new profile, profile x. The central database servers need not know specifically individual identifying information about profile x, but can still maintain surveillance of profile x. if characteristics in either the database or the access trigger an alarm at 560, the alarm is sent back over the network 532 to the location. The authorities can then find the person corresponding to profile x, apprehend person acts, allowing the central database to be updated with more information about the identity of the person corresponding to profile x. However, the lack of identity does not stop the database from maintaining information about the person.
This may also allay privacy concerns, since the database knows the person only by their physical characteristics and not necessarily by their specific identity. In addition, since the specific identity does not need to be found, this system facilitates tracking people without any initial registration of the person's identity at all.
The above has described one way of determining a person's physical characteristics. However, it should be understood that the basic concepts which are described herein can be extended to other methods of detecting a person's basic characteristics. In fact, this represents a totally new paradigm; whereby a person's physical characteristics are used to track the person without initial registration of those physical characteristics, and hence without specifically knowing who that person represents.
According to another embodiment, the system may be used for profiling animals. Show horses are still measured with paper measuring tapes for features that make it a prize bloodline for rating and judging purposes. The present measuring system could be used for horses, show dogs, bulls, pigs, cows, chickens etc to see if they are up to par, wrestlers, prize fighters, football players, hockey players etc.
Moreover, even though the above has described certain physical characteristics, it should be understood that this system is also intended to cover all other physical characteristics such as foot size and length, hand size and length and the like.
Although only a few embodiments have been disclosed in detail above, other modifications are possible, and this disclosure is intended to cover all such modifications, and most particularly, any modification which might be predictable to a person having ordinary skill in the art.
Also, only those claims which use the words “means for” are intended to be interpreted under 35 USC 112, sixth paragraph. Moreover, no limitations from the specification are intended to be read into any claims, unless those limitations are expressly included in the claims.
This application claims priority to U.S. provisional application Ser. No. 60/544,691, filed Feb. 12, 2004, the disclosure of which is incorporated by reference.
Number | Date | Country | |
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60544691 | Feb 2004 | US |