IARPA Awards $12M Grant to MSU for Drone Biometrics Project

Researchers at Michigan State University (MSU) have received a $12 million grant from the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) for a project focused on drone-based biometric recognition. The four-year federal grant is part of IARPA’s Biometric Recognition and Identification at Altitude and Range (BRIAR) program.

The initiative aims to develop software systems capable of identifying individuals in challenging imaging conditions, such as from a distance or at an altitude. The MSU team, led by Xiaoming Liu, Arun Ross, and Anil Jain, will work on extracting biometric signatures like an individual’s gait, body shape, and face. The project aims to overcome the limitations of current biometric technologies, which generally require the sensor to be in close proximity to the individual.

MSU’s prototype system, known as FarSight, is designed to recognize individuals from a distance using drone technology. The system comprises six components: detection and tracking, image restoration, and feature extraction for face, gait, and body shape, along with multimodal biometric fusion. The next phase of the project will focus on recognizing multiple individuals from a range of 600 to 700 meters.

IARPA’s BRIAR program has been in the works for several years and has recently transitioned from the exploratory phase to actual research and development. The agency has awarded contracts to multiple research teams, including MSU, to build a comprehensive system that can perform both face and whole-body identification. The system is intended for deployment in drones and is designed to operate under harsh atmospheric conditions.

The MSU team has discovered that certain biometric measurements, such as a person’s height, build, and gait, often provide more useful information for identification than facial features when images are captured from a long distance. The project also involves researchers from other institutions, including Purdue University, the University of Texas at Austin, and the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Source: MSU Today

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September 20, 2023 – by the FindBiometrics Editorial Team