SilentSense: Application to detect your fingers without additional sensors coming soon

Image Credit - linesh jose

Recently Apple announced its much awaited iPhone 5S and the major highlight of the device apart from upgraded OS is the fingerprint sensor which enables you to make sure that your phone data is more secure.
There is a good news for those who  those who are not going for iPhone but have desire to protect their mobile data in the same way as biometric sensor or more precisely finger print sensor in iPhone 5s does.

U.K. bases scientists have developed an app named "SilentSense" which can identify touch of your fingerprints with the help of accelerometer and gyroscope only which are most common sensors in present day smart phones. Hence it can provide similar security level to your data as fingerprint sensor does.

According to the developers an algorithm on the smart phone uses sensors to quickly learn about your taps, swipes, pressure on the screen etc to determine user of the phone. SilentSense is currently being developed at Illinois Institute of Technology. It keeps track of how screen moves when you use your phone, it also stores touch duration, pressure and size of fingers to identify unique user.

As per tests on 100 users, application was able to correctly identify phone's owner in 10 taps or less than that with 99% accuracy but even with average of 2.3 taps SilentSense was 98% accurate.

As of now application stops monitoring touches when apps and mobile games are used, but it is activated as soon as sensitive applications such as SMS or emails are accessed. But if application is running continuously in back ground it will lead to faster battery drainage which will be another overhead where people are looking for more and more battery backup. As of now research is going on , hope that when it comes to market it comes with proper battery optimization.

For me it is an interesting approach to increase security to your mobile which lacks fingerprint sensors. Waiting to try it on my android :).

Do share your thoughts about SilentSense in comments.