The technologies for fingerprint scanning are found in a wide range of products, and facial recognition systems are not far behind
Biometrics has for more than a decade stood on the cusp of mainstream adoption.
Talked about endlessly by futurists and used in countless Hollywood science fiction films, these technologies, which check a person's identity by recognising physical or behaviour traits, have year after year been vaunted as the next big thing but have struggled to make their way out of the research and development pipeline.
In the past few years, however, lower production costs and improvements in reliability have finally allowed biometrics to enter daily life.
While we may be still decades away from being clocked by auto-targeting iris-scanning systems as we walk about the city, like Tom Cruise in the film Minority Report, biometric identity authentication has already made its way into Hong Kong's cross-border check points, various consumer electronics products applications such as laptops and portable data storage devices, and in some security systems that control access to rooms and buildings.
Visitors to China Sourcing Fair: Electronics & Components, a trade fair organised by Global Sources at AsiaWorld-Expo from Saturday to next Tuesday, will see a full range of access control products and solutions employing biometric technologies.
Linpo Optics, an exhibitor at the fair, has expanded its biometric product portfolio significantly in the past two years.