14 DAY TRIAL // Experts from the Advanced Institute of Industrial Technology, in Japan, announce the creation of a prototype car seat that can recognize a passenger based on the size, shape and weight of their buttocks.
The high-tech seat features about 360 sensors distributed at key points across its surface, which can determine pressure with a high degree of sensitivity. Team leader and associate professor Shigeomi Koshimizu says that the system has a 98 percent accuracy level.
If automakers agree to use this system then, two or three years from now, car thieves may have to wear fake bottoms, molded after those of the actual owners. Otherwise, the seats will act as secondary alarms, if the rear end they detect is not one in their databases.
Installing such a seat would also carry less psychological stress than using conventional biometric identification techniques, such as iris scans or fingerprint reading, PhysOrg reports.