Little Giant | Zhang Xuan, Chairman of Shengdian Technology: Quenching the Invisible "Biological Key"

Economic Observer reporter Chen Shan face recognition, iris recognition, vein recognition... These dazzling technologies in science fiction movies have gradually entered our lives and changed our lives. Among them, the biological distribution of veins is about one in four billion, and this "uniqueness" makes vein recognition a safer new generation of biometric technology.

Different from fingerprint recognition, iris recognition, face recognition and other body surface biometrics, vein recognition is a kind of in vivo biometrics. The principle is to use the absorption characteristics of venous blood to obtain human vein texture images, and then store and identify the venous template through image processing technology and key algorithms.

Founded in 2011, Shengdian Century Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Shengdian Technology") is a deep practitioner in the field of vein recognition. The company's self-developed vein algorithm is industry-leading, providing overall solutions from vein algorithms, embedded modules, terminal products to software platform services, and plays an important role in smart finance, smart education, smart city, military, xinchuang, consumer electronics and other industries.

Zhang Xuan, chairman of Shengdian Technology, said in an exclusive interview with the Economic Observer reporter that vein recognition technology has innate technical advantages, it is an invisible biological key, internal biometrics non-contact without leaving marks; at the same time, it has a wealth of biometric features, and the number of vein punctate features is 2 times that of fingerprints. "Vein recognition has higher requirements for algorithms, and with the gradual development of technology and the gradual enhancement of deep learning, vein recognition will eventually become the safest and most widely used biometric technology for the whole people." Zhang Xuan said.

Third entrepreneurship

A native of Yuncheng, Shanxi, Zhang Xuan graduated from Xidian University of Electronic Science and Technology with a major in communication engineering, and founded Shengdian Technology in 2011. It was also his third venture.

As early as 2002, Zhang Xuan opened the road to entrepreneurship, the first time was about underground safety equipment and safety certification systems, and the second was environmental protection related projects.

When Shengdian Technology was first established, the company's positioning was based on information customization and information service solutions, and four research and development directions were determined at that time: biometrics, Internet development, medical informatization, and virtualization technology development. "After long-term and close 'communication' with our customers, including the market, technology precipitation and judgment of the future, we finally chose vein recognition as a strategic direction." Zhang Xuan said, "Vein recognition is more secure than faces, fingerprints, etc., at that time, our customers were mainly concentrated in the military and banking fields, and their requirements for safety determined our pace of choosing the direction of veins." ”

At the same time, around 2012 and 2013, it was the transition period from fingerprints to face recognition, Zhang Xuan did not think of cutting into this popular track, but because there were still some problems with related technologies at that time, the public's criticism of information leakage and privacy made him firmly choose a vein recognition track with higher security and relatively unpopularity.

According to reports, vein recognition technology has the characteristics of "viability", "uniqueness", "stability", and "not easy to copy". First, it must be a living human body to effectively collect and identify veins; second, the probability of duplication of vein distribution in biology is extremely small (1/3.4 billion), and vein recognition is enough to support the identity authentication of human beings with any high security needs; third, the vein characteristics remain stable throughout a person's life; fourth, the distribution of veins is in vivo characteristics, which is difficult to steal and copy.

From identifying vein recognition as the company's only strategic direction, Shengdian Technology has been deeply involved in this field for nearly a decade, and now, it has grown into a global leader in vein recognition.

Refining the Invisible "Biological Key"

Looking back at the ten years that Holy Point Technology has gone through, it has also experienced some periods of confusion and difficulties. Zhang Xuan believes that constantly breaking through technical problems and maintaining innovative development is the key to the company's breakthrough in the field of veins.

What makes Zhang Xuan remember deeply is in 2016 and 2017, when the first generation of intravenous recognition products just entered the market, because the stability of the product algorithm is not mature now, and the new technology also has higher requirements for user capabilities, so the market did not give positive feedback. "At the same time, we encountered technical difficulties that were difficult to control and implement, and the whole team experienced a very difficult and confused period at that time." He recalled, "In the following about half a year, after the efforts of our entire R & D team, day and night research, including communication with customers, running-in, and finally broke through the technical problems." ”

Zhang Xuan also took the application of vein recognition on home smart locks as an example, and said that behind the launch of each product, the R & D team paid an unknown hardship and effort.

Because the vein smart lock needs to be tested in different temperatures and environments, such as the test environment in winter and the test environment for the elderly and children. In order to overcome these algorithm problems, Zhang Xuan and his R&D team will do large-scale experiments, such as going to the nursing home and kindergarten, organizing large-scale tests; going to the south and north to do tests in different temperature environments. "If there is no winter environment, the R&D personnel will create a winter environment and put their hands in frozen cold water to soak." Because of the low temperature environment, the blood flow is slow, and the vasoconstriction has a great influence on the algorithm. Zhang Xuan said.

In the view of Zhang Xuan, the biggest core competitiveness of Shengdian Technology is the industry barrier that has been formed by technical advantages.

First of all, at the product terminal level, the company creatively developed a microcontroller architecture without an operating system, added a professional mechanism design, and solved the drawbacks of most of the vein devices on the market that are prone to crash. In terms of module miniaturization, the company has achieved the first international leader in China.

At the system application level, combined with "Internet + technology", "cloud service technology" and "big data analysis technology", the company has realized the system architecture of front-end collection and cloud comparison, so as to carry out cloud storage, cloud certification, and cloud comparison, greatly improving the data reuse rate and reducing customer costs.

In addition, for the first time in China, the company has realized the integrated comparison of cloud multi-modal (multiple identity authentication technology) recognition; at the same time, it is also the only company in China that independently realizes the design of FPGA chips for venous algorithms, and the only company in China to provide a complete venous identification software and hardware system.

Zhang Xuan believes that the venous biometric market space is huge, in addition to replacing the original traditional biometric technology (fingerprints, faces, etc.), it can also be superimposed on fingerprint / face recognition technology to form a multimodal biometric system, which can retain biological information, achieve remote recognition, and meet the authentication needs of a higher security level. He believes that in addition to squeezing the original biometric market share, vein recognition technology has a broader market space to be developed.

According to the company's strategic planning, in addition to the continuous development of the B-end market, in 2021, the products of Shengdian Technology for the C-end market (represented by vein smart locks) have been placed on the market in large quantities. Zhang Xuan believes that in the future, with the molding of vein chips and the maturity of sonic acquisition of vein image technology, consumer electronics end vein mobile payment will bring great changes to the biometrics industry, "the C-end market is huge, easy to achieve a wider range of consumer cognition, the change of new technologies can be quickly reflected in the volume of income, the application of imagination space." ”