What is biometrics?

According to the National Academies Press, “biometrics is the automated recognition of individuals based on their behavioral and biological characteristics.” Humans typically recognize other humans through vision but how do machines recognize humans? Machines can use a whole host of physical characteristics to recognize individual humans.

The history of automated human recognition systems began with semi-automated speech recognition in the middle of the 20th century. It was followed by semi- and fully automated fingerprint, handwriting, and facial recognition systems in the 1960s. The commercial deployment of automated hand geometry and fingerprint recognition systems happened in the 1970s. By the late 20th century iris and face recognition systems became widely deployed.