An interesting article on the AFIS system:
techreview.com
There is a hint in the article that Printrak, NEC and Sagem may find themselves in trouble:
"In fact, the PC revolution is just now reaching the fingerprint field. Mainframe AFIS systems still run to hundreds of thousands of dollars. But last June the upstart Phoenix Group in Pittsburg, Kansas, began offering an “AFIX Tracker” that, according to its resident, Derald Caudle, searches minutiae points in all latent/ten-print combinations, holds 30,000 print records (enough for a small city)—and operates on a Pentium II Windows machine with an 11.5-gigabyte hard drive. The price: $17,000 for the software, or $950 a month to rent the whole rig."
I don't think this new approach forecloses the need for tenprint readers -- in fact, it could promote their spread -- but it could threaten the integrators' systems. |
