IARPA Wants Autonomous Fingerprint Tech

The intelligence community wants to be able to capture an entire fingerprint—from one edge of the nail bed to the other—without a human operator and is offering $325,000 in prizes for the technology to do so.

The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity’s Nail to Nail Fingerprint Challenge seeks a biometric capture device that does not require a human operator to roll a subject’s finger over a capture surface but still provides as good or better data.

The challenge kicks off Feb. 6 and is open to industry and academia. It will have three phases: registration and feasibility, development and judging, and test and evaluation.

During testing, the device must have a less than 10 percent failure rate and capture prints from all 10 fingers.

The challenge offers $325,000 in prizes divvied up into categories, including the $100,000 grand prize for the best usable matching system, and $25,000 prizes for accuracy and speed.

The deadline to register for the challenge is March 17.