OREANDA-NEWS. December 12, 2012. CROC has successfully implemented its first dynamic face recognition system. The system was deployed at the company's head office in Moscow, where a Broadway 3D gate from Artec ID is installed at the entrance to the building. CROC is an official distributor of Artec Group, which is the only company offering 3D face recognition systems in the Russian market. Thanks to ease of installation and CROC's extensive experience in information security solution integration, the system installation and registration of 500 employees (a quarter of CROC employees volunteered to participate in the project) was performed in just four days.

Currently, the solution is already being used by several large organizations around the world, including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Qatar, a large commercial bank in Spain and an electronics factory in Japan.

A 3D recognition system provides a high level of security because it is much more difficult to forge a 3D model of the face than a pass card. In addition, the solution has recognition threshold settings and thus allows for either a reduction or increase in the level of security at the facility. For instance, if the threshold is set to 'high', the system will not pass even a twin of a registered employee. Such a device can be installed as needed in high security areas only, at the entrance to a valuables depository for example.

In registration mode, the Broadway 3D camera captures the unique three-dimensional shape of the face, being able to differentiate nuanced geometry with accuracy of up to fractions of a millimeter. Next, the system creates a biometric template (3.5 kb), which is stored to the database and assigned to the user’s ID and card. The process of registration takes only two seconds. The device is able to analyze 40 thousand dots on surface of the face, create an accurate face pattern and compare it with the database within one second.

The solution supports two operational modes: identification and verification. In the first mode, the system compares the 3D face model and the biometric template, and if they match it lets the person in. In the second mode, the system reads the pass card and then compares the visitor's face with the assigned template in the database. Thus, the system is checking whether the pass card really belongs to the person who wants to enter the building. If the data does not match, the system alerts the security service.

"A face recognition system is a good solution for companies where security is of primary importance, including banks, museum valuable depositories, hospitals, airports, etc. In addition, the system can be useful for manufacturing enterprises since, at the start of a shift, traffic flow is very intense and it is nearly impossible to track whether each person uses his or her own pass card or not. Thanks to its rich functionality, including identification mode, the solution will be demanded by large business centers and will save clients from having to adjust their access control systems in order to comply with the different types of cards used by their tenants. Indeed, a major media holding and an industrial enterprise have already expressed their interest in the solution," comments Anna Nemirovskaya, Head of Complex Security Systems, Intelligent Building Department, CROC.

"The solution has a number of advantages compared with other recognition systems such as fingerprint reading devices. 3D recognition has a much lower failure and false positive rate while contactless technology does not require continuous sensor cleaning and time consuming positioning in front of the device. Furthermore, this solution is much more accurate and reliable than photo-based identification; its performance is not affected by light conditions or head rotation. A person wearing any head accessories or facial hair can be as easily recognized. All the obstacles faced by 2D recognition technology are surmounted by 3D identification. Unlike any other biometrics, in case of 3D face recognition failure to enroll rate is zero. Compared to similar 3D face recognition devices, Broadway 3D system analyzes more data during face acquisition by projecting a special light pattern, the grid, onto the face at a parallax angle. Grid distortion produced by the geometry of objects is used to calculate the exact 3D coordinates of each point,” said Anna Stebleva, VP of Business Development, Artec ID.