An article from Newcastle University may get a chuckle from fans of Pullman's His Dark Materials as the electronics community presents its idea of 'Biometric Daemons.'
Portable electronic pets able to recognise their owner's voice and walking style are being developed by North East researchers.
The devices, similar to the popular electronic Tamagotchi pets, are being developed as an alternative to passwords and PINs to keep personal details and accounts secure.
Called 'biometric daemons', they borrow a concept from Philip Pullman's 'His Dark Materials' series, in which people are accompanied by an animal daemon that is a physical representation of their soul.
Professor Pamela Briggs, a psychologist and computer scientist at Northumbria University and computer scientist Dr Patrick Olivier at Newcastle University, believe their idea could match the security of biometric security systems and avoid privacy fears at the same time.
Instead of an individual’s biometric signature being stored on a separate database, they would exist only in the daemon – a small gadget carried around by its owner.
It would learn to imprint itself on its owner, and then react to unique biometric signals, such as a person’s voiceprint, fingerprints or walking style.
The human-daemon bond would be further strengthened through games and interaction, with recognizable signals making the daemon ‘happy’ and able to verify the owner's identity, just like a PIN or password.
However, a daemon separated from its owner would eventually pine away and die, just as Pullman's daemons do when separated from their humans.
Dr Olivier says elements needed to make a prototype daemon already exist. Accelerometers – similar to those used in the Nintendo Wiimote – could detect an individual's gait, and speech recognition software could identify a unique voiceprint.
A paper on biometric daemons was presented by Professor Briggs and Dr Olivier at the Usability, Psychology, and Security 2008 conference in San Francisco, California, last month.
Thanks to Dr. Frost for the article heads up!
2 comments - Add yours
#1 Wow
Wow, well uh, if anything thats interesting and certainly new. It’d never be the same though as having a real daemon obviously, but still kind of cool.
# May 10, 2008 03:22 by LoveBitesLoveBleeds
#2 Newcastle Uni
Given that this comes from Newcastle Uni does this story amount to “Once Upon a Time in the North-East”? LoL :-)
# May 10, 2008 14:57 by mattouter