KAC: Creating smarter airports | Fujitsu Korea

Pandemic-ready technology

The solution for KAC was PalmSecure, Fujitsu’s palm vein recognition system — and its application has proved to be highly advantageous in the era of Covid-19. With the pandemic forcing the wearing of face masks in many public spaces and minimal contact between people, palm vein recognition has gained a lot of positive attention. That’s because palm vein recognition — unlike several other identity verification technologies — is seen as satisfying many of the new requirements. The prevalence of face masks, for example, has reduced the applicability — and accuracy — of facial recognition technologies. And fingerprint recognition is not seen as ideal as it requires individuals to physically touch scanners as part of the verification process.

In contrast, palm vein recognition technologies allow people to verify their identifies without taking off their mask. And with its sensors detecting the patterns in palm veins by emitting near-infrared rays, verification is achieved without any physical contact between an individual’s hand and the device. In a pandemic-impacted world, that lack of contact is highly positive for hygiene — both for the individual and the airport environment.

Needless to say, Jung did not foresee the outbreak of Covid-19 when he first selected Fujitsu’s PalmSecure technology. “I chose it based on my judgment that the palm vein technology excels over other biometric technologies in various aspects,” he says.

Most importantly, palm vein recognition is simply more accurate than many other biometric technologies. “When comparing the accuracy indicators of False Acceptance Rates (incorrectly accepting an access attempt by an unauthorized user) and False Rejection Rates (incorrectly rejecting an access attempt by an authorized user), palm vein recognition turned out to be the most advanced,” Jung explains. “That is because, unlike other recognition technologies, palm vein recognition utilizes the unique information that exists under the human skin.”

Fingerprint, facial and iris recognition technologies, though widely used, rely on image-scanning technologies. They store the external appearances of a fingerprint, face or iris as a digital image and look up those when a person is verifying their identity. In contrast, palm vein verification works by identifying the unique pattern of deoxygenated hemoglobin in subcutaneous tissue.