Critical Anthropometric & Ergonomic Elements for Reliable Hand Placement in Hand Geometry Based Authentication

Identification, Authentication and Privacy
Eric P. Kukula, Stephen J. Elliott, Ph.D.
The goal of this research is to provide a new, ergonomically designed biometric device that includes an examination on critical anthropometric and ergonomic elements to improve hand placement and resulting performance for a hand geometry device. This area of research called Human Biometric Sensor Interaction (HBSI) is a new topic of interest in the biometric community. To date however, a literature search has yielded little work in the area related to human factors with regard to biometric device design. Thus, developing a system that integrates ergonomics into research and development of a biometric system would provide the community with an example to adapt other biometric devices by including ergonomics in the development. This work utilizes mixed methods; incorporating qualitative and quantitative research to meet this need. The development of the device will combine critical anthropometric elements, as well as surveys, interviews, and focus groups of four groups including: technical and ergonomic experts, hand geometry users, and the elderly, those suffering from musculoskeletal disorders, and other disabilities. The output of the qualitative analysis will be used to create a prototype device, which will be tested in a comparative study of existing systems against the ergonomically developed device to determine if improvements are realized.