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Hands-on approach to airport access control

Access to the tarmac or air operations area (AOA) is a critical concern at airports. It is for this reason that more than 170 of Recognition Systems' patented biometric HandReaders have been installed at San Francisco International Airport.

The HandReader, which verifies a user's identity by reading the size and shape of a person's hand, is in use at more than a dozen major US airports, including New York's Kennedy International and principal airports serving Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami and Newark, New Jersey. HandReaders are also a key component of the US Immigration and Naturalization Service's INSPASS programme. Frequent international travellers enrolled in the programme use a self-service kiosk that includes a HandReader, thus avoiding long immigration lines.

At the new San Francisco Airport international terminal, many HandReaders are hard-wired to a Locknetics electromagnetic door lock. When used in tandem, the two devices begin operating when a person slides a magnetic stripe card, containing an ID number, through a card reader.

The person then places his or her hand in the HandReader, which analyses some 90 separate measurements of the hand's length, width, thickness and surface area. The HandReader quickly compares this data with the hand 'template' previously stored in the reader's memory. If the hand matches, entry to the restricted area is granted automatically. If no match is determined, the door remains locked. The hand verification process takes less than a second.

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