Annual Report 2010

Research and development - the future

Developing world-leading technology requires major investment, cutting-edge competence and committed people. Precise Biometrics attaches great importance to Research & Development. This is where the new generations of fingerprint solutions are created, and where new products are developed and packaged.

Research

Research at Precise Biometrics is fundamental for the survival of the Company and enables it to remain competitive in an industry that is continually changing. The research team is focused on the further development of the fingerprint algorithms that form the underlying structure of the Company’s products. This work takes place both in internal research projects and in external EU financed projects.

EU projects

In the last few years the research department has participated in two EU projects, Turbine and BioPass, both of which will be completed in the first quarter of 2011. These research projects have been very successful and have led to new products in both cases. A new EU project was initiated in 2010 – eGo – the objective of which is to develop technology for identification between objects and users, and entirely by means of “touch”.

Standardization

During the year the Research department has worked with different types of standardization projects. Such projects have mainly been focused on standardization of new and old products. Standardization effort has also been targeted towards different types of regional standards – mainly for the US market.

Development

The development department develops and packages Precise Biometrics’ products and services. Support and consultancy services are also an integral part of the team’s assignments. The development department works both on customer-specific projects and on internal development projects related to Company products and its overall product range. Precise Biometrics Solutions, the former subsidiary in Karlstad, is now fully integrated with the development department in Lund.

New products during the year

In parallel with work on customer-specific projects, Precise Biometrics implemented several product launches in 2010 which included a new product for integration of the ISO standardized Match-on-Card – Precise BioMatch™ ISO Match-on-Card. This product is based on technology from the Company’s fingerprint extractor that achieved the highest ranking in Ongoing MINEX.

Precise BioMatch™ ANSI 378 was also launched during the year, an integration tool to embed solutions based on standardized fingerprint technology. ANSI 378 was specified in the PIV card issued to all government employees in the US.

Precise Biometrics has also released a solution for simple personal logon in Windows 7. The objective of this launch was that users considering implementing more advanced logon solutions would have the opportunity of seeing how easy it actually is to use biometrics.

During the year the development department has produced a completely new family of fingerprint readers, which will be launched in a total of 6 models. The first 3 models were released after the end of the year in January 2011. The new readers are intended to broaden the Company’s product range, above all in volume sales to the banking and corporate segments. The readers are both cost-efficient and easy for customers to use. The new series includes combined fingerprint and smart card readers, as well as readers for only fingerprint recognition.

Patents

Precise Biometrics works actively to reinforce the protection around the Company’s products. The patent portfolio has been successively reinforced since 2001 and at the end of 2010 included 68 patents and 28 patent applications within 17 different patent families. Ten patent families refer to Precise Match-on-Card.