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Watch That Tiny $74 1.5GHz Android-Powered Thumb-Puter In Action Japanese company Fukui has unveiled 12 gym machines with finger-vein readers, which adjust the settings of the fitness equipment automatically for regular users. Costing around US$17,000 each, the gear can be hooked up to a remote server to update gym bunnies’ stats—calorie consumption and current exercise regime—with the info then displayed on a touchscreen. Go for the burn, fingers. [Pink Tentacle]
Remember a couple of months back, and Hitachi’s announcement that it had developed fingervein-scanning technology? Well, according to a Hitachi press release, it’s going to be deployed in vehicles in the hope of cutting car theft. And that’s not all that the technology will be able to do.
Fingerprint scanners are so last century. The new wave of finger-based recognition uses veins, not fingerprints, to ID people. Hitachi has just announced their new biometric cardless credit payment system that reads the patterns of blood vessels in one’s fingers. Apparently, all our veins are unique, like snowflakes or, well, fingerprints, and can be used to easily ID people. Simply slide your finger into the machine and in a second you’ll be verified. These things should start popping up in Japanese convenience stores and panty vending machines in the near future, with their migration over here sure to happen soon afterwards. Anything that’ll let me pay for stuff without having the few seconds that getting my wallet out takes to ponder my purchase is A-OK with me. [Pink Tentacle]
