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Abstract for Seminar
The science of biometrics has come a long way in its short history: from starting as a series of academic studies, biometrics are increasingly being rolled out via commercial devices, all in about 30 years. Naturally, there are performance issues which remain, and this is consistent with progress of any new technology. There is still much research but the advance is very clear. The time is then ripe for exploitation in other domains, and one of these is the potential use of biometrics use in forensics. This is not new: there is identification by dental pattern, and this has natural forensic use. The use of ears in forensics has a rather more chequered history, though there are now biometric approaches which centre on the human ear benefitting from the relative age-invariance of the ear's structure. Gait concerns recognising people by the way they walk and has already been used as evidence within two murder convictions in Denmark. In these, the subject's face and other identification was obscured, rendering gait the only possible contender for identification. As such, the time is appropriate for research into the translation of biometrics into forensics, and this talk will review the advantages and topics for study in this regard, whilst reviewing progress which has already been made in using biometrics in the forensic domain.