ITUD20000148A1 - USER RECOGNITION SYSTEM FOR AUTOMATED ACCESS MANAGEMENT, USE OF EQUIPMENT AND USE OF GOODS OR SERVICES - Google Patents

Description

Description of the invention having as title:

"USER RECOGNITION SYSTEM FOR THE AUTOMATED MANAGEMENT OF ACCESSES, USE OF EQUIPMENT AND USE OF GOODS OR SERVICES"

FIELD OF APPLICATION

The present invention relates to an integrated user recognition system, suitable for allowing the automated management of accesses and the personalized use of equipment, vending machines, goods, services or the like.

The present invention, which can be used in a substantially unlimited number of applications, is suitable for the construction and management of a customer archive, for the management of production flows, databases, employee archives, the possibility of remote payments, and more. .

The invention, thanks to the establishment of a bidirectional flow of information between an acquirer and a central processor such as a PC or a Server, allows the two-way management, through biometric recognition, of a data or customized data flows, integrated in a system, and delivered in real time on a large scale, which can be accessed without any hindrance and with absolute certainty and safety, at extremely low production and management costs.

The invention can be used for the management of users of public premises whose access is allowed both by subscription, such as gyms, meeting rooms, discos, subways and more, and on an occasional basis, for example public offices, prisons, banks, etc. . The invention, through automatic biometric recognition of a physical identifying characteristic of a user, possibly combined with the typing of a personal data or a personal code on a special keyboard, can also allow to manage in a personalized way the use of a plurality of equipment , distributors or services.

In the case of use of goods and services, the user's recognition can be combined with an automatic charge.

STATE OF THE TECHNIQUE

The problems associated with the construction and personalized management of accesses that allow, in public premises or establishments, offices, hospitals, on means of transport such as subways or trains, and more, to regulate access and to allow only to subscribers, booked or otherwise recognized users, to benefit from particular goods and services in a personalized way.

The current use of a mostly paper registration methodology, possibly combined with magnetic identification cards (such as badges for offices and factories or ATMs for the provision of credit services), often involves inefficiencies, slow research, employment of huge spaces in the archives, difficulties in retrieving data, and other problems, including that of requiring the constant presence of at least one operator.

Automated biometric recognition systems based on the reading of some physical characteristics of the user, for example fingerprints or retina, have been studied for particular protected environments such as banks or the like. internal microprocessor to process the acquired data and memory integrated in the same reading medium.

Such systems have the drawback of a high cost, since each single reading means constitutes a substantially complete unit, equipped with its own processing unit and its own memory means; at the same time, the memory capacity of each reading medium is limited, not allowing the registration, and only in the most advanced and expensive models, of more than 5000 fingerprints (usually 2500 users). Furthermore, the speed of work and self-synchronization of data between multiple data loggers connected to each other cannot be very high as the whole phase of acquisition, comparison and possible recording is carried out by the single reading medium, and interfacing with a central unit takes place passively, normally via a very slow serial line of the RS232 type, for data reporting only.

Reading systems are also known which manage, by means of fingerprint recognition, access to Personal Computers and / or enable the use of the relative keyboards, in order to avoid the use of awkward passwords. These systems are specifically dedicated for this function; therefore, the data transmission takes place on a parallel port, or on a USB port, being able to cover only a very limited extension with distances not exceeding about 5 m. This makes them unsuitable for uses such as access management or the use of business equipment and public places.

In order to solve these drawbacks and obtain further advantages set out below, the proponent has devised, tested and implemented the present invention.

EXPOSURE OF THE FOUND

The present invention is expressed and characterized in the main claim.

The secondary claims set forth other features of the main solution idea. The purpose of the invention is to create an integrated user recognition system suitable for the personalized management of access to premises, tools, information, graphic animations, files, the possibility of moving goods, services and money, which is suitable for managing a substantially unlimited number of users at a very low cost of production, installation and management, given the very low overall energy consumption.

This system also has the advantage of not entailing an increase in additional costs, neither for the operator nor for the user, determined by the purchase of a magnetic card or similar means of identification.

Another purpose is to provide an integrated system of the modular type, which can be expanded and implemented at any time according to the needs that materialize over time in the premises or public establishment that uses it.

A further purpose is to eliminate any type of recognition instrument such as an electronic card or the like, which may be subject to being forgotten, lost or demagnetized, and which in any case normally requires the memorization of a personal code (PIN).

Yet another purpose is to allow the manager of the public premises or the supplying body of goods or services to process the data acquired by users in order to perform statistics, temporal analyzes, accounting studies and more and to make them available in real time, on the same network, in a highly personalized way and further customizable through the commands of any keyboards or displays connected to the acquirer.

The system according to the invention is based on the biometric recognition of a physical characteristic of the user; in the following of the description the solution which provides for the recognition of the user's fingerprint will be illustrated in detail, being in any case equivalent solutions which provide for the recognition of another distinctive physical characteristic, for example the retina.

This system comprises at least one unit, advantageously a plurality of units, connected via a synchronous serial network to at least one central processor.

In a preferential solution, this synchronous serial network is of the type using the RS485 standard with a transmission speed of about 2Mbps.

According to the main feature of the present invention, each of said peripheral units is equipped with at least one detection element, or sensor, for biometric detection of the physical characteristic of the user to be recognized, for example the fingerprint, and with at least one card electronics for the acquisition of the data detected by said detection element and their transmission to the central computer.

In a preferential solution, said electronic card also comprises means (buffer) for the temporary recording of the data awaiting their transmission to the central computer.

In another solution, said electronic card is also suitable for compressing the data acquired by the relative detection element in order to obtain a higher transmission speed. Between each peripheral unit and the related central processor there is at least one interface unit, or network card, suitable for connecting a port of said central processor with the serial network with which the peripheral units are connected.

In a first solution, the computer port connected to the network is one or more USB ports. According to another solution, at least one parallel port of the central computer is used.

The electronic card associated with each of the peripheral units is suitable for managing a bidirectional broadband data flow (2Mbps), through said network and the relative interface, with a relative central processor.

Furthermore, this electronic card is also suitable for managing communication with a keypad and with a relative alphanumeric or graphic display.

Thanks to this, the information relating to the specific user acquired by the detection element, both for the first registration and for the subsequent comparison and possible recognition, are transferred in a substantially instantaneous manner to the central computer, which thus becomes completely interactive. with its peripheral units.

Thanks to the interface that allows data processing on broadband, the data flow can in fact become bidirectional in real time, even on a large scale, for example on the Internet.

Upon receipt of this flow of information, the central computer stores the characteristic and identification data of the user, in the form of a code having an extremely reduced size, of the order of about 300 bytes.

Then, this code is saved in the hard disk of the central computer and all the additional non-essential information is deleted, this also to safeguard the privacy of individual users as it is no longer possible to trace the fingerprint from this code, and therefore to the user, who generated it.

With this solution, the advantage is obtained of transferring the entire customer database, from the single reading terminals, as is currently the case, to a central processor which, thanks to the data encoding, is able to store information of a substantially unlimited number. of users, the size of which depends only on the size of the hard disk of the central computer itself.

The use of an acquisition and data transmission card associated with each of the peripheral units, and the presence of interface units suitable for simultaneously managing multiple acquisitions, allows the establishment of a network connection between various groups or modules of peripheral units also arranged for distances between them of the order of 1 km, which can be increased by means of suitable amplification systems.

The system according to the invention, in addition to using a dedicated local network, can also be used on the internet to allow a registered user, by acquiring and sending his own identification code, to carry out remote operations for the purchase or rental of goods or services. . In this case, each peripheral unit can be set up to send, through a relative local central computer, a biometric data in the tcp / ip network to a remote computer and to establish a two-way, personalized and real-time data communication with it. .

ILLUSTRATION OF DRAWINGS

These and other characteristics of the invention will be clear from reading the description of some preferential embodiments, made with reference to the attached tables, in which we have that:

- fig. 1 shows a basic diagram of the user recognition system according to the invention;

- fig. 2 shows a first variant of fig. 1; - fig. 3 shows another variant of fig. 1; - fig. 4 shows a further variant of fig.

1;

- figs. 5 and 6 illustrate two further solutions of the invention.

DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERENTIAL REALIZATIONS OF

FOUND

With reference to the attached figures, an integrated user recognition system according to the invention is indicated as a whole with the reference number 10.

It comprises a plurality of peripheral units 11, each equipped with at least its own sensor 12, which can be substantially of any type, for the recognition of a distinctive physical characteristic of a user, in this case the fingerprint of a finger 13 .

In the preferential solution, the sensor 12 consists of a silicon microchip associated with a surface on which the user places his finger 13.

The microchip is able, through processing by an appropriate dedicated recognition software, to create a digital shape corresponding to the user's fingerprint and convert it into a video signal with a resolution of up to 500 dpi.

Each peripheral unit 11 is equipped with an electronic data acquisition and control board 14 which is arranged to allow the bidirectional communication of the data acquired by the sensor 12 with a relative central processor 15, to which a plurality of said peripheral units 11 are connected.

This bidirectional communication takes place via a synchronous serial cable 16, for example using the RS485 communication protocol, which allows the transmission of data at 10 Mbps for distances up to 400 m, and at 2 Mbps for distances up to about 1.2 km. .

The connection between the serial cable 16 and the central processor 15 takes place via an interface 17, equipped with at least one chip 18 of the RS485 standard which is suitable, in the standard configuration, to manage up to 32 peripherals 11 (Fig. 1).

The interface 17 is arranged for the connection between the cable 16 and a USB port, or a parallel port, 19 of the central computer 15, thus establishing a bidirectional connection between each peripheral unit 11 and this computer 15, which thus becomes completely and continuously interactive with the data acquisition elements. In particular, the interface 17 constitutes a network card suitable for managing biometric data from one or more sensors 12 of related peripheral units 11 and generic data from graphic or text files.

In this way, thanks to the presence of the data acquisition and control board 14, the information relating to each individual user, acquired through sensor 12, is substantially instantaneously and through said interface 17, transferred to the central computer 15, to the inside which the entire customer database of the room where the system 10 is installed is stored.

The central computer 15 carries out the data processing, and in particular constructs an identification code, having a size of the order of 300 bytes, from each acquired fingerprint; it also performs a possible comparison with the pre-stored data in the archive.

The wide bandwidth (2 Mbps) with which the data transmission takes place makes it possible to make the central processor 15 fully interactive with the relative peripheral units 11; thanks to the encoding of the acquired and stored data, this allows the construction of a substantially unlimited data archive, the capacity of which depends only on the size of the hard disk of the computer 15.

The interface 17, which can also be equipped with a buffer 20 for managing the data communication between the acquisition cards 14 and the central processor 15 and for managing multiple connection and data transfer requests, with a single chip 18 it can manage, in the standard configuration, up to 32 peripheral units 11.

If it is necessary to connect a greater number of peripheral units, the configuration of fig. 2, in which several blocks 21, each of 32 peripheral devices, are connected, by means of a relative serial cable 16, to its own interface 17, which interfaces 17 in turn connect to relative USB ports 19 of the central computer 15.

The further variant of fig. 3 provides for the connection of 64 peripheral units 11 thanks to the use of an interface 17 equipped with two chips 18 of RS485 standard.

The other variant of fig. 4 provides that two or more connection interfaces 17, each with its own chip 18, are connected to a hub 22 which then provides for routing the data to the central processor 15.

Another solution, illustrated in fig. 6, provides that a plurality of interfaces 17 are connected to each other in cascade, and that only the last interface 17 of the chain is connected to a port 19 of the central computer 15.

Yet another solution, illustrated in fig. 5, provides that a plurality of peripheral units 11 are connected to each other in cascade and then to the interface 17 which establishes communication with the central computer 15.

With these variants, which do not exhaust all the possible network configurations that can be realized given the basic architecture of the system, the number of peripheral units 11 that can be connected to a central computer 15 can be extended in a substantially unlimited way; this thanks to the possibility of inserting more connection interfaces 17 into the network, each equipped with a desired number of chips 18, and thanks to the ability of each USB or parallel port 19 of the central computer 15 to keep up to 127 interfaces in the network 17.

From the above it can be seen that the use of an acquisition and control card 14 associated with each peripheral unit 11 for data detection allows the entire management of the customer database to be transferred to the central computer 15, thus relieving the unit 11 itself. In this way, the memory capacity can be increased in a substantially unlimited way, as well as the processing speed; in addition, you get the ability to manage data in a TCP / IP network.

The use of suitable processing and management software allows to compress the data already acquired at the peripheral units 11, reducing the volume of data transmitted and therefore increasing the speed; the coding performed at the central computer 15 allows to reduce to a minimum the space necessary for storing the data of the specific user. This coding also makes it possible to guarantee the protection of privacy since, after coding, the image of the fingerprint can no longer be reconstructed.

The electronic card 14 also allows the management of the alphanumeric or graphic display 23 and the keyboard 24, of the active or passive membrane type, with which each peripheral unit 11 can be equipped.

In the figures, some standard components with which the various blocks are equipped, such as memory buffers, power supplies, signal amplifiers, connectors and the like, have been omitted, as they are irrelevant for the purposes of the invention.

A plurality of variants and modifications can be made to the present invention without departing from the scope of protection of the invention itself.

For example, instead of using a cable connection, it is possible to connect the peripheral units 11, the interface 17 and the central computer 15 by means of a radio connection, thus making the need for any type of wiring superfluous.

As already said, in addition to the USB port, the connection to the central computer 15 can also take place via the parallel port of the computer 15 itself. The parallel port connection can also be combined with the USB port connection to manage a higher number of peripheral units 11.

The integrated system 10 according to the invention can be used in a substantially unlimited variety of applications.

In addition to access control, this system is particularly suitable for the use of vending machines with automatic debit; for the use of equipment, such as gyms, with machines that can be configured automatically after user recognition; for locking locks without requiring keys or the like; for the authorization of payments, transfers or purchases, and more.

In a further variant of the invention, said interface unit 17 can be integrated into the motherboard of a relative central processor 15. According to a further evolution, moreover, the software of said interface 17 and of said peripheral units 11 can be updated and modified. via network.

Claims (1)

CLAIMS 1 - User recognition system for the automated management of accesses, use of equipment and use of goods or services, including at least one peripheral unit (11) equipped with at least one biometric detection element (12) of a physical characteristic identifying the user, characterized by the fact that said peripheral unit (11) is equipped with at least one electronic card (14) suitable for bidirectional transmission of the data acquired by said detection element (12) to a relative central processor (15), through at least one interface unit (17) having the function of network card and interface between a port (19) of the central computer (15) and a serial communication network. 2 - System as in Claim 1, characterized in that said physical characteristic is a user's fingerprint and said detection element (12) is a fingerprint reader. 3 - System as in Claim 1, characterized in that said physical feature is a user's retina and said detection element (12) is a retina reader. 4 - System as in Claim 1, characterized in that said electronic card (14) comprises at least one RS485 communication chip, and is suitable for transmitting said data to the central computer (15), through said interface (17), to a speeds of about 2Mbps or higher. 5 - System as in Claim 1, characterized in that said electronic card (14) is suitable for recording at least temporarily said data acquired by said detection element (12) and for performing a compression on them in order to obtain a speed of faster transmission. 6 - System as in claim 1, characterized by the fact that said at least one interface unit (17) is equipped with at least one RS485 communication chip and is suitable for creating communication, at speeds of the order of about 2Mbps, between a port (19) of said central computer (15) and at least one of said electronic cards (14) associated with a relative peripheral unit (11). 7 - System as claimed in Claim 6, characterized in that said port (19) is a USB port. 8 - System as claimed in Claim 6, characterized in that said gate (19) is a parallel gate. 9 - System as claimed in Claim 4, characterized in that the connection between each peripheral unit (11) and said interface unit (17) takes place via a synchronous serial cable (16) using the RS485 communication protocol. 10 - System as claimed in either of the preceding claims, characterized in that each interface unit (17) comprises two or more of said chips (18) for connecting at least 64 peripheral units to said central processor (15) . 11 - System as claimed in either of the preceding claims, characterized in that it comprises several blocks (21), each having up to 32 peripheral units (11), connected to the central computer (15) by means of a relative interface unit (17). 12 System as in one of the preceding claims, characterized by the fact that it comprises at least one connection hub (22) able to connect at least two of said interface units (17) to said central computer (15). 13 - System as claimed in one or the other of the preceding claims, characterized in that said interface unit (17) is equipped with a buffer (20) for the management of multiple connection and data transfer requests. 14 - System as claimed in one or the other of the preceding claims, characterized in that a plurality of peripheral units (11) are connected to each other in cascade and connected to at least one of said interface units (17). 15 - System as in one or the other of the preceding claims, characterized in that each peripheral unit (11) is suitable for sending, via a local central computer (15), a biometric data in the tcp / ip network to a computer (15 ) remote and to establish a two-way, personalized and real-time data communication with the latter. 16 - System as claimed in one or the other of the preceding claims, characterized in that a plurality of interface units (17) are connected to each other in cascade and connected to at least one of the ports (19) of the central computer (15) . 17 - System as claimed in Claim 4, characterized in that the connection between each peripheral unit (11) and said interface unit (17) takes place via radio connection. 18 - System as in Claim 1, characterized by the fact that said electronic card (14) is arranged for the connection of an alphanumeric or graphic display (23) and of a relative keyboard (24). 19 - System as claimed in Claim 1, characterized in that said at least one interface unit (17) can be integrated into the motherboard of the central computer (15). 20 - System as in Claim 1, characterized in that the software of said interface (17) and of said peripheral unit (11) can be updated and modified via the network. 21 - User recognition system for the automated management of accesses, use of equipment and use of goods or services, substantially as described with reference to the attached drawings.