Sensor can scan fingerprints from a distance of two meters

A company has developed a prototype of a device that can scan fingerprints from up to two meters away. The device, called AIRprint, detects fingerprints by shining polarized light onto a person's hand and analyzing the reflection using two cameras configured to detect different polarizations.

The prototype device, which scans a print in 0.1 seconds and processes it in about four seconds, can handle only one finger at a time. Also, the scanned finger must remain at a fixed distance from the device. But by April, Burcham expects to have made significant improvements. By then, he says, the device should be able to scan five fingers at once even if a person is moving toward or away from the cameras, and the processing time ought to have dropped to less than a second.

Previously.