During America’s long love affair of watching cop shows (from Hawaii Five-O to CSI) the fingerprint has been a staple. As soon as someone said “book ‘em, Danno” out came the ink, the little pieces of paper and the rather genteel pressing and rolling. Modern shows will often reference the FBI’s AFIS (Automatic Fingerprint Identification System) with elaborate light shows and quick flashes of mug shots as the computer desperately searches for a match to a fingerprint. Yet, for all the glory it gets, the fingerprint has evolved very little in the last 60 years. They’re still two dimensional. The US department of Homeland Security and the National Institute of Justice are hoping to change that. They’ve given grants to dozens of companies to perfect touchless 3D fingerprinting. Two universities (University of Kentucky and Carnegie Mellon) and their two respective start up companies (Flashscan 3D and TBS Holdings) have succeeded. Fingerprints have reached the third dimension and they are faster, more accurate, and touchless.

Biosensors are the future of security checks. We’ve already shown you how they include face and gait analysis and are reaching towards brain scans. One day you might even use your ear to prove your identification. In the meantime, however, fingerprints have the history, and the online databases to serve as the premier form of security ID. 3D touchless fingerprinting will allow rapid processing of people in public places (each finger scan takes less than 1 second) and most devices function automatically. When technology gets quick and easy to use, it starts to become much more common. We could see 3D fingerprinting become as ubiquitous as metal detectors.
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