Among smart home products, smart door locks are already a fairly mature category. Everyone uses smart door locks to replace traditional door locks, and the most direct purpose is to get a better unlocking experience. For smart door locks, the core user needs are actually easy to use and safe. The smart door lock itself is also constantly evolving, and more and more brands are joining, intensifying the competition in the door lock market and forcing brands to continue to iterate and update their products.
The unlocking methods on smart door locks are becoming more and more diverse, from the most traditional physical keys, passwords to fingerprints, NFC, and 3D faces. Now, some smart door locks are trying a newer-sounding biometric method - vein unlocking.
Recently, Xiaomi smart door lock 2 finger vein version, Yunmi Super3Y palm vein face recognition smart door lock has been put on the Xiaomi Youpin platform, priced at 1299 yuan and 1999 yuan respectively. With a novel unlocking method and a competitive price, will vein unlocking become a standard feature of smart door locks in the future?
Vein unlocking, better to use and safer than fingerprints?
The vein unlocking on the smart door lock refers to the use of the human body's veins as biological information as a unique certificate, which is similar to fingerprints, iris, and faces. In practice, the infrared light emitted by the device will irradiate the human body, and the heme in the blood flowing in the blood vessels of the human body will absorb the infrared light, thus forming a vein image. The device further compares the collected vein data with the previously entered vein images through the corresponding algorithm to determine whether it passes the verification.
At present, the vein unlocking technology used on the smart door lock mainly includes finger veins and palm veins, and the two products recently released by Xiaomi and Yunmi just use these two schemes respectively. Judging from Xiaomi's official demonstration, the handle of the Xiaomi smart door lock 2 finger vein version is equipped with a small area vein recognition device behind the handle for the detection of single finger vein information.
(Source: Xiaomi)
Relatively speaking, the Yunmi smart door lock with palm vein unlocking scheme has a larger vein recognition area and a little farther away. Of course, which way is more convenient depends on personal usage habits.
(Source: Yunmi)
Seeing this, many people may still have questions: when fingerprint recognition is popularized and mature, why do you still need to add vein unlocking technology to the door lock?
The most direct reason is that fingerprint technology has obvious limitations in the application of smart door locks. First of all, it is not friendly to the elderly and children, many of whom have the problem of fingerprint wear, which is easy to identify and difficult; Children's fingerprints are relatively light, and there are similar problems. Moreover, fingerprint unlocking is achieved by contact, and if ordinary people point out sweat or peeling, they may also encounter the trouble of failing fingerprint recognition.
In contrast, the human blood vessel image has the same unique characteristics as the fingerprint, and because it is an internal feature, it can avoid problems such as wear and tear of the fingerprint. In terms of security, both have strong guarantees.
However, vein technology may not be as perfect as some manufacturers advertise. Judging from the feedback from the existing vein door lock users, although the characteristics of human veins will not change significantly, in relatively cold temperatures, there will be subtle changes in the characteristics caused by vasoconstriction. In this way, users can enter intravenous information in warm weather, and in winter it is more likely to have problems that cannot be recognized. Comparatively speaking, this type of situation is more likely to occur in the northern regions.
The simplest and most brutal solution to this problem is to enter multiple sets of venous information, including in warm and cold temperatures. What manufacturers need to do is to continuously improve the algorithm for upgrading veins. Of course, compared with faces and fingerprints, vein technology is not so widely used in the current scenarios, and the data that can be collected for algorithm training is not so abundant, and it will take longer for vein unlocking to become better to use.
The diversification of unlocking methods is the result of the involution of the smart door lock market
Nowadays, almost every smart door lock will have several unlocking methods, and biometrics related to not only veins, but also fingerprints, 3D faces, iris, etc. Most of these technologies have appeared on smartphones, and the solutions are relatively mature, and the convenience and security have been proven for a long time. In addition, the most traditional physical key mechanical unlocking, digital password unlocking, smart door locks are naturally supported, in addition to remote unlocking, NFC unlocking, Bluetooth unlocking and other ways to open the door are also widely available, which is very in line with the intelligent characteristics of smart door locks.
In Xiao Lei's view, these unlocking methods actually have their own advantages and disadvantages. In the case of 3D face unlocking, it has good performance in terms of unlocking speed and security, but it also has the disadvantage of high power consumption, and it is difficult to identify when the user is wearing a hat or mask. NFC and Bluetooth unlocking methods need to be realized through mobile phones, and there is one more step in the process of opening the door, and many uncertainties may be encountered in actual use, such as Bluetooth is not connected instantly, and iPhone does not support door card simulation.
Under the current technical conditions, supporting a variety of unlocking methods, especially a variety of biometrics, has become a common strategy adopted by mainstream smart door lock manufacturers. The Xiaomi smart door lock that is still on pre-sale 2-finger vein version, in addition to vein unlocking, also supports fingerprints, passwords, Bluetooth, NFC, these more common unlocking methods. Moreover, this product is also connected to Xiaomi's own ecology, and it can also be unlocked with a Xiaomi mobile phone or Xiaomi watch. The more expensive Yunmi Super3Y palm vein face recognition smart door lock has an additional 3D face unlocking function.
(Source: Xiaomi)
In addition, for ordinary users, the main use of smart door locks is the home. Generally speaking, in the home scenario, smart door locks will have multiple users, which may include the elderly, young people, middle-aged people, children, etc. Different family members prefer different unlocking methods and unlocking habits, so products that support multiple unlocking methods are obviously a better choice.
For manufacturers, making smart door locks support more unlocking methods is a means of adding products. According to the data provided by Lotu Technology, in 2023, the omni-channel sales of domestic smart door locks will be 18.01 million sets, a year-on-year increase of 2.4%, and the growth rate will slow down significantly compared with previous years. Moreover, the average price of smart door locks has dropped to 1147 yuan, which further shows the high competition in this market.
In the face of fierce market competition, addition is relatively easy to execute and can quickly form a product selling point. Therefore, smart door lock manufacturers will be more and more inclined to launch products with diversified unlocking methods. As for the door lock products that only support one or two unlocking methods, they can either only enter the low-cost entry market, or they are facing the fate of stopping production and clearing warehouses.
Accelerating intelligence will be the future way out of door lock products
However, Xiaolei believes that the addition of smart door locks in the unlocking method is not an act that can be continued forever. After all, there are only a few commonly used unlocking methods that most users really need, and the marginal effect will gradually decrease as there are more and more unlocking methods. In other words, the number of unlocking methods of smart door locks will always come to an end. Today, in 2024, smart door locks need to find a new product direction.
Smart door locks have been able to catch on and quickly open up the market, largely due to their "smart" attributes. Compared with traditional door locks, smart door locks provide a more intelligent unlocking method, bringing a better user experience. It's just that if the development direction of smart door locks just stays at increasing unlocking methods, it is obviously not enough.
At that time, the emergence of smart door locks was accompanied by the initial development of smart home, and now, smart home has gradually evolved to a new stage, showing a new form of space intelligence and whole house intelligence.
In the era of whole-house intelligence, more emphasis is placed on the linkage and collaboration between different smart devices in the home scene. This actually gives smart door locks more room for development, and we can already see this trend on some products.
For example, this year, TCL released the cat's eye smart lock, it combines the smart cat's eye and the smart door lock, in addition to having the functions of the conventional smart door lock, it also supports security monitoring, remote video call and other functions. For example, when the user comes to the door, the door lock transmits this information to the entire whole house system, and then the air conditioner, lamps, TVs and other equipment in the house will automatically turn on or adjust the parameters according to the pre-set mode, bringing users a new experience of automation.
(Source: Produced by Lei Technology)
All in all, it is the intelligent characteristics of smart door locks, which can find a wider product evolution model at a time when the trend of spatial intelligence and Internet of Everything is becoming more and more obvious. From the user's point of view, the use scenarios created by smart door locks in the future can be more abundant, provide more functions, and have stronger linkage capabilities with other smart devices. And this may be the right direction of development for smart door locks in the new era.