Riggan, WatchID team working to develop whole-body biometric identification systems

Benjamin Riggan, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, is part of WatchID — a team of researchers from across the country participating in a competitive federal government research program to develop software systems capable of performing whole-body biometric identification from long distances and at elevated pitch angles.

The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) website said the Biometric Recognition and Identification at Altitude and Range (BRIAR) program is vital because many intelligence agencies require the ability to recognize individuals under challenging scenarios – such as at long range (300+ meters), through atmospheric turbulence, and from watchtowers or unmanned aerial vehicles (drones). IARPA projects are administered by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

"If you think from 1,000 meters that you can get somebody's fingerprint, by all means try, but it's not likely to succeed given the limited resolution," Riggan said. "Characteristics like a person's face, gait, or physical measurements between joints — like the length of the bone from an elbow to the wrist — that's the type of information that may help make recognition successful at long range."

The multi-disciplinary research team is comprised of Intelligent Automation —A BlueHalo Company (PI: Mun Wai Lee), University of Nebraska-Lincoln (PI: Benjamin Riggan) and University of Nebraska-Omaha (PI: Nick Stergiou), University of Maryland College Park (PI: Shuvra S. Bhattacharyya), and Resonant Sciences (PI: Michael Hawks).

Riggan is leading the NU teams (UNL and UNO) which may receive up to $1 million (or more) across BRIAR's three program phases to support the cost of the research and the work of three graduate students.

BRIAR's Phase I, which runs 18 months, is underway. Riggan said Nebraska's contribution in this phase will be on whole-body biometric identification – particularly re-identification and facial recognition in both domain-adaptive and unsupervised systems – and supporting large-scale data collection efforts.

As a former research scientist at the U.S. Army Research Lab and as a current faculty member at UNL, Riggan's experience working on nighttime facial recognition—matching thermal face images with enrolled visible face images—will be beneficial in matching distorted, low-quality, outdoor imagery with higher-quality, indoor enrollment imagery

This phase, Riggan said, will face many logistical challenges. That includes finding places in the Lincoln area where researchers can fly drones that are far enough from Lincoln Municipal Airport so the drones will not interfere with airplane traffic. Riggan said one location for this data collection is the University's research farm near 84th Street and Havelock Avenue.

Then there's recruiting more than 200 subjects to be evaluated and have their biometric information collected both indoors and outdoors and after wardrobe changes. If Riggan's team is selected to move on in the competition, he said, the second phase might require three times as many subjects for data collection.

Riggan noted that many people have legitimate concerns about this type of work, mostly centered on privacy issues. This team is emphasizing the use of ethical practices that are reviewed by Institutional Review Boards, which monitor and review biomedical research involving human subjects. This includes allowing subjects to decide whether their identifiable data may be used in publications or presentations.

"It's important to have a focus on privacy and performing responsible research while performing biometric research," Riggan said.

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To participate in the study: must be 19 years and older / $100 for WatchID study. The ~2 hour appointments will be held at the Havelock Research Farm (84^th St. and Havelock Ave.) July 16-29, with times available from 9:00 a.m. – 7:00 p.m. For more details, refer to the project website (https://engineering.unl.edu/WatchID/)