Forget fingerprints or the colour of your eyes, airport security could soon be looking at the shape of your ears when deciding whether to allow you into the country.
Researchers have discovered that each person's ears have a unique shape and have created a system that is able to scan them. The scans can then be compared with a database of ear shapes to identify whose they are.
They hope that the system can be used to take pictures of a person's ear as they walk through passport control.
Professor Mark Nixon, who led the team from the school of electronics and computer science at the University of Southampton, said: "There are a whole load of structures in the ear that you can use to get a set of measurements that are unique to an individual.
"With biometrics, a lot of the problems is what happens when people get old. With facial recognition, the systems are often confused by crows feet and other signs of ageing. Your ears, however, age very gracefully. They grow proportionally larger and your lobe gets a bit more elongated, but otherwise your ears are fully formed from birth." ... READ MORE
