The Cutting Edge: COMPUTING / TECHNOLOGY / INNOVATION : Home, Safe Home : New Technologies Promise to Guard the Frightened
It’s there every night on the local news: gruesome footage of police officers inspecting crime scenes while paramedics wheel bodies out of otherwise tranquil neighborhoods.
For years, the fear created by such images has been motivating those with the means to invest in high-tech home security systems. Now the frightened are going beyond the magnetic devices and infrared sensors that detect unauthorized entrances and movement within a home. They’re going to people like Kim Bowers.
Bowers is vice president of EyeDentify, a Baton Rouge, La., maker of retinal scanners--devices that take a digital picture of the back of an eye, measure how well it reflects and absorbs light in 380 different places, then compares those readings to a file on a computer chip. Access to a home is granted only if there is a match.
Security companies have also developed systems that can identify someone within seconds by analyzing his or her fingerprints, signature, voice or facial heat. These methods, collectively called biometrics, are at the center of a new wave of home security technologies that promise to protect the well-off in the 21st Century.
This year, about 1.4 million Americans are expected to spend about $4 billion outfitting their homes with security devices, said Joe Freeman, principal of JP Freeman & Co., a market research firm in Newtown, Conn. He attributes the boom to the abundance of crime footage on local news broadcasts.
“That has created an awful lot of paranoia about dastardly deeds, including burglary,” Freeman said. “The impact of the daily news diet over time starts people thinking, ‘Well, I should have a system.’ ”
In March, EyeDentify began selling a two-pound, $2,000-version of its retina scanner that could replace a key pad as an entry device for homes. That still places it on the pricey side of residential security systems--the average cost for a system is less then $1,200--but a few dozen customers have already installed them, Bowers said.
A basic home security system includes a control panel mounted on a front wall, magnetic contacts on the doors and a path of infrared detectors inside. Many systems are connected to patrol services that respond when one of the home-based devices is tripped by an intruder.
Like compact disc players and personal computers, residential security systems are getting smaller, cheaper and more technically advanced. Incremental improvements in traditional key pads and sensors are reducing the incidence of false alarms.
And equipment that was once used only by large corporations and top-secret government agencies is now being bought by homeowners as well. Home security specialists say the biometric devices will be commonplace within five years.
“The only thing that positively identifies a person is a biometric device,” said Bill Wilson, vice president of Campbell, Calif.-based Recognition Systems.
Recognition Systems has developed a “hand key” that uses an infrared camera to identify people by their hands. The system scrutinizes the three-dimensional image created by the camera and looks for the unique patterns that belong to only one person.
The $2,500 machine takes about a second to do its job. “You go up to a house, enter an ID number and place your hand on a flat surface with pins to position your fingers,” Wilson said. “If it matches, the door opens. If it doesn’t, it says, ‘Identification refused.’ ”
Body parts are not the only things that can be subjected to biometric analysis. International Electronics, a company in the Boston suburb of Canton, plans to market a device to identify people by voice.
Voice Key analyzes not only the pitch of a voice, but the volume of the throat, mouth and lungs. It takes a digital picture of the frequency and amplitude of the voice and compares it to a stored pattern.
Other biometric systems identify people by the patterns of their handwriting or by taking thermal pictures of their faces.
In the movies, villains occasionally get past a biometric device by chopping off a hand or carving out an eye. But manufacturers promise that such measures would not fool a real-life system.
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High Security
Concerns about rising crime are driving more people to outfit their homes with security systems. Sales are also getting a boost from falling prices and increasingly sophisticated technology.
NUMBER OF SYSTEMS
Number of security systems in the United States, in millions:
2000: 27.1
AMOUNT SPENT
Amount spent on residential security systems, in billions:
2000: $4.5
AVERAGE COST
Average cost of a residential home security system*:
2000: $900
* Bought through an independent dealer. Cost includes hardware and installation but not patrolling costs.
Source: JP Freeman & Co.
