Mobile Robot Authentication System Using Finger Print Matching

There are increasing requirements for mobile personal identification, e.g. to protect identity theft in wireless applications. Based on built-in cameras of mobile devices, fingerprint images may be captured and analyzed for individual authentication. However, current available fingerprint recognition methods are not suitable for real-time implementations due to the limited computational resources of handheld devices, such as PDA or mobile phones. This paper proposes a method for creating unique identifiers, called fingerprint sequences, for visually distinct locations by recovering statistically significant features in panoramic color images. Fingerprint sequences are expressive enough for mobile robot localization, as demonstrated using a minimum energy sequence-matching algorithm that is described. Empirical results in two different places demonstrate the reliability of the system for global localization on a Nomad Scout mobile robot.