Poster: Vocal Resonance as a Passive Biometric.

With continuing advances in the development of low-power electronics, including sensors and actuators, we anticipate a rapid expansion of pervasive computing. Wearable devices, in particular, require new modes for interaction -- many have no keyboard or touchscreen. In this work, we focus on user authentication on wearable devices. For an entertainment device, such as a VR headset, it can recognize the user and load the right game profile or music playlist. For a house climate-control system, it can adjust the environment to the wearer's preference. Most compellingly, for a health-monitoring device, it can label the sensor data with the correct identity so that the data can be stored in the correct health record. (A mix-up of sensor data could lead to incorrect decisions, with harm to the patient.) Because not all devices are personal devices -- my phone, your fitness sensor -- many devices will need to automatically recognize their wearer. They may have no interface for user identification (or PIN or password for authentication). Thus, we need a simple, wearable biometric technique to identify the user -- which could be embedded in one authentication device that shares the identity with a body-area network of other devices (earlier confirmed to be on the same body). This device should be trained once, for each user that might wear it, but thenceforth be completely automatic. Although a wristband could use a physiological biometric to recognize its wearer; we seek an alternative biometric, notably, one that might work for devices mounted on the head, neck, or chest.