Infant Biometric Data Acquisitions: The Lessons Learnt

Collecting relevant data is an important aspect in allowing evaluation of the performance of systems, methods, algorithms, and techniques developed in the research process. Researchers at the South African Scientific and Industrial Research Council perfoemd a study to identify biometric(s) that can be used to identify and verify young children from birth to 16 years old. Three types of biometrics were considered in this study as a resukt of a comprehensive preliminary research, namely, fingerprins, iris and ear shap. This paper presents challenges identified and lessons learned during the in trying to collect data for scientific research that require interaction with children of different ages and their parents in different environments. . The study is primarily based on researcher’s experiences. Some of the discussion points discussed are of global relevance to children and general human beings, while others relate to South Africa in particular. The discussion aims to share knowledge and experience, hoping that this will help researchers prepare for a trouble-free child data collection process in the future. Keywords: Baby biometrics; long-term data collection, baby fingerprints, baby iris, baby ears