Arizona DOT adopts facial recognition technology from NEC

NEC Corporation of America (NEC) recently announced that the company’s innovative and award-winning NeoFace technology will soon be in use by the Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT).

NEC specializes in IT, networking, communications and multimodal biometric solutions. The company’s NeoFace technology functions as facial recognition software.

The automated facial recognition solution utilizes NEC’s NeoFace Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), which will allow ADOT to use the biometric solution through a cloud platform.

ADOT has a database of approximately 7.7 million driver’s license and identification records, which stores approximately 16 million images. The state’s transportation department will use the NeoFace technology to improve the process of issuing state credentials.

The NeoFace facial recognition software system interfaces with credential issuance processes. The intention there is to help reduce fraudulent identity activities.

The cloud-based NeoFace technology gives ADOT a proven, reliable, off-site solution for electronic facial recognition.

On top of facial matching technology, NEC’s NeoFace solution includes NeoFace Reveal, a tool for investigating fraud. Reveal works by giving ADOT the ability to open investigation cases, and search through photographs and images to compare to the driver’s licenses and identification card records contained in the Arizona database.

NEC’s algorithms have been shown to give the lowest error rates on data sets across all image types including mug shots and webcams.