The goal of this Reactive LTR project is to realize a prototypeautonomous station for personal identification. This station will include all the features required to be integrated in to a newgeneration of automated security check-point along corridors,passageways or access doors, and in the next-generation ofautomatic teller machines. This prototype will be used to performa significant set of statistical test on personal identification.Secure access control is a key issue in banking services. Magneticcards and personal identification numbers, currently adopted foraccessing automatic tellers, do not provide a sufficient degree ofsecurity and are likely a source of unauthorized operations. Asfar as the access to restricted areas is concerned, it usuallyrequires direct surveillance by guards or indirect surveillance bya human operator through a monitoring system. Even in this case it is often difficult, due to fatigue or other distracting factors,to guarantee continuous and high performance in this task.

The project is mainly focused on banking services, in particular for secure and safe control of access to key areas in the bank building and for cross-checking personal identity of peoplerequesting banking transactions. A system based on visual recognition will have a major impact on man machine interaction, providing a more natural way for the customer to interact with the banking security system. The project will also have a potential impact in various scenarios ranging from generic surveillance in buildings and parking areas to security control through check points in airports or railway stations.
Our approach will be to exploit newly-developed advanced techniques based on computer vision and robotics. Iconic and feature-based techniques will be utilized in the first instance and in case of ambiguities performances will be improved by using stereo analysis and the general theory of projective invariants. A
breakthrough with respect to current technology will be given by the use of space-variant image representation and by the realization of an active robotic system, able to fixate and trackthe examined subject.