El Sadar, Osasuna’s stadium, is known for its intense, almost hellish atmosphere, which intimidates any rival, no matter how small. And since one of the last days of last season, also for being the first stadium in Spain which allows access to its partners via facial recognition. They walk in looking at one of the club-enabled totems, after registering their face in the official app, and that’s it. No papers, no plastic cards, no QReven without a mobile.
An Osasuna – Alavés, which also ended in a local victory by the minimum thanks to a goal in added time, was the match that saw the birth of this new way of accessing a football pitch. And the technology that made it possible, both at the hardware and software level, is Spanish. Plus: he’s originally from Pamplona, where most of his 180 employees work.
Moncayola in the center and Veridas at the entrance
Biometric solutions company Veridas, headquartered less than four kilometers from the stadium pinkis the one who developed both the identity verification part of the members who decided to test this way of accessing the stadium and the authentication part (determining who wants to access the pitch).
To register in the system it is not necessary to go to the stadium, everything is done from the mobile
The proposal is voluntary and only the members who wanted to try it have carried out the previous steps, which are only necessary once: show the identity document and the subscriber card to the mobile camera, then show their face. A registration that can be done from anywhere, via mobile.
Truthsthrough the doorits line of business in the physical realm, transforms these images into a chop, a number of unique digits for each face that cannot be reimagined. It does this through a pre-trained artificial intelligence engine. Once this engine detects a face, it is able to distinguish and recognize it even in the face of physical changes or despite the passage of time. He understands a life detection system to prevent fraud in the form of photos, videos or masks.
“It doesn’t use information like distances between parts of the face or anything like that, which was done by older biometric systems, use of modern technologies chop. It learns to distinguish a face in the same way as our brain: it does not measure distances or create point masks to adapt, it simply recognizes it in an abstract way”, explains the CEO of Veridas, Eduardo Azanzain conversation with Xataka.
Biometric access is voluntary and can be temporarily assigned, also via face, to a friend to attend a game for us
Azanza says that the company does not retain customer information. In this case, Osasuna is the one who keeps these hashes on their own servers. If this information were stolen, the thief would only see the digital vector corresponding to each chopbut not the images of faces next to each person’s name.
One of the usual doubts was whether those who adopted this system could continue to give their subscription to a friend or family member if they could not attend. The answer is yes…both in a traditional way and in a new way.
On the one hand, the physical subscription remains fully functional even if someone has registered your biometric access. You just have to physically lend it to the other person. On the other hand, the application allows send a link to someone else so that you register your face and can enter the specific match for which we want to give it to you. “In this way, counterfeiting or resale is avoided, because you associate a season ticket or a ticket with an identity,” explains Eduardo.
Subscription-linked face registration process via QR. Image: Truths.
The result of this implementation is that those who used it entered the field in three seconds each. At the rate of twenty accesses per minute. The average number of accesses per card with QR is six accesses per minute. Particularly important speed at a delicate moment like the moments before the match: there are people who arrive at the last minute and who get angry if they take time to get there, there are groups who are a little upset by the match itself, many people gather in a small space…
The manufacture of the totems that Veridas uses as towers, equipped with cameras and screens, is also national. “The competition was mainly Asian. When we talk about personal data, biometrics, data protection… We wanted to make sure of the data from start to finish, that there was no possibility of data leaks. information or backdoors,” explains the CEO.
5 people access El Sadar:
1) Physical payment.
2) With your face.
3) With your face.
4) With your face.
5) Physical payment.✅ Facial biometric access is much faster, more comfortable and safer. Here the test: pic.twitter.com/DywTtoQjiT
– dasGate (@dasGate_es) April 21, 2022
Veridas’ history in identity verification and authentication goes back a long way. They were the ones who launched the BBVA campaign which invited people to register with the bank “make a selfie” with an operating principle such as Osasuna’s biometric registration: they verify that a person is who they claim to be through their identity and face. work in collaboration with the Directorate General for the Regulation of Games of Chance to prevent minors or members of the self-exclusion list from being able to play.
In addition to other sectors where they are present, such as in a residence for the mentally handicapped to allow its users to access their rooms simply by standing in front of the door and scanning their face (“these are often non-autonomous people to manipulate a key or an access card”, says the CEO), Veridas will increase its presence in football, both nationally and internationally. Several first and second division clubs have shown an interest in their product and they are in negotiations, as well as the Mexican soccer league.