A St Ives electronic business has helped to create finger scanning technology to provide a unique identification method for eastern countries.
Prima Electronic Services has joined forces with Cambridge-based Simprints who supply fingerprint sensor modules to countries such as Tanzania, Ethiopia and Bangladesh.
These provide the means to accurately identify people in places where the forms of documentation which are commonplace in Western economies are simply not available.
In such situations, biometrics offer an effective alternative.
When plans were formulated by Simprints’ engineering team to produce the Vero 2, an upgraded version of its existing fingerprint sensing solution, the decision was made to engage with Prima.
The local support, plus exceptional responsiveness and technical expertise it could provide were all recognised as being highly beneficial to the project’s completion within a tight deadline.
Claire Woods, operations director at Prima said: “The challenging nature of this project meant that our team had to work closely and collaboratively with Simprint’s engineers throughout.
“This was essential to achieving the results in such a short time frame, as prototyping, testing and the scale-up of production all had to be done at an accelerated rate.
“Having completed production of the original Vero 2 order, Prima is now ready to meet further shipment requirements.”
Alexandra Grigore, chief product officer at Simprints said: “At least a billion people around the world don’t have any documentation to prove their identity, so access to biometric data is vital.
“Our next generation Vero solution had to incorporate various enhancements.
“The most important of these was the ability to transfer images in full, rather than approximations made on an alphanumeric template.
“This will give much greater scope for our data to interoperate with algorithms employed by other organisations.
“Further key aspects were improvements to the battery technology to extend operational lifespan, and use of RGB LEDs to enable better cultural acceptance.
“The advice and assistance we received from Prima was invaluable in meeting all our objectives.”
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