The future of MTSU student IDs, in the palm of your hand on The Murfreesboro Post

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The future of MTSU student IDs, in the palm of your hand

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By: MICHELLE WILLARD, Post Staff Writer

Posted: Sunday, July 20, 2008 9:00 am

When Middle Tennessee State University’s remodeled Recreation Center opens students don’t need to worry about remembering their student ID’s, all they need is their hand.

The MTSU student ID office will start using technology that seems more like science fiction than fact Aug. 1 with a hand-geometry system.

“The Rec Center wanted to use it to prevent misuse of ID cards to gain access …” said Shawn Alverson, MTSU ID office manager. “They’ve had problems over the years and the technology is cheap enough now.”

Alverson explained the Rec Center has had problems with theft and other crimes, mostly from non-students who slip into the facility and the hand scan is a way to prevent “theft of services.”

By the fall, all students, faculty and staff members will have new BlueIDs and a hand scan in the system.

In the olden days, the university used social security numbers for student identification, now it will scan the student’s hand and turn the silhouette into an ID number.

The device measures hand prints and records the length, width, thickness and surface area – but doesn’t record palm or finger prints – and develops a alphanumeric sequence that will be the student’s ID number.

A second hand reader will be in the Rec Center. So when a students forget their IDs, all they need to do is scan their hands to get in.

“It could be expanded to other locations in the future but the Rec Center spearheaded the effort,” Alverson said, meaning future students could check out library books with their hands.

The technology was originally developed in 1985 and has since been used commercially since 1986.

In fact the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta used similar technology to restrict access to the Olympic Village where athletes are housed, according to the National Science and Technology Council.

Michelle Willard can be contacted at 615-869-0816 or mwillard@murfreesboropost.com.

Tagged under MTSU

Member Opinions:

By: Trvlace on 7/20/08
We used something similar at UT Knoxville, it measured the bones in your fingers. Nobody has the exact same length finger bones. It worked ok most of the time, but the readers failed sometimes. You just had to show your card then.