CellMax to introduce voice biometrics to the cafeteria line
Company overcomes technological hurdles to offer alternative to lunchtime fingerprinting; loud noise and puberty among challenges; PCS Revenue Control teams up to provide point-of-sale services
Perhaps it is because we recall our own lunchroom traumas that we so frequently report on the latest trend in biometrics: managing school lunches. Obviously this is more about commerce than homeland security — though yet again it protects the weaker students from bullies — but the strongest of technologies, we have found, also have non-defense-related appliactions. Consider as an example the case of Tel Aviv, Isreal-based CellMax. The company has teamed up with point-of-sale (POS) system producer PCS Revenue Control Systems, Inc., to develop a rapid, voice recognition-based payment system for school cafeterias.
The first thing to note is the biometric modality chosen for the scheme. So far, fingerprinting has dominated the cafeteria market. Voice biometrics, though previously considered, has always faced technological hurdles in that setting, particularly the rowdy background noise and, in a factor unknown to most security systems, sudden voice changes brought on by puberty which effect false acceptance/rejection rates. CellMax now claims that it has overcome these problems. “Our technology filters out background noise. If a child or parent is phoning in, it can support and authenticate input over landline, VoIP and we’ve even managed to overcome cellular phone distortion. It also ‘learns’ constantly, adapting to gradual voiceprint changes, and even dramatic ones, like an adolescent’s voice breaking,” said company CTO Ziv Barzilay.
The system, which will roll-out in early 2007, has an initial potential market of 800 U.S. school districts.
Company notes: CellMax recently secured $2 million in Round B funding from U.S.-based CellMax Vision, led by Jacob and Nediva Schwarz, also known as the founders of IDS and NS Enterprises. (CellMax Systems closed a $1.3 million Round A funding investment in 2003 by the Wolfson Group, led by private investor Morris Wolfson, founder of Ness Technologies.) The funds will be used to help penetrate its proprietary VioMetrics security technology into the call center and CRM markets.
-read more in this Security Park report
