COLEGIO DE STA.

TERESA DE AVILA
School of Information Technology
1166 Quirino Hiway, Brgy. Kaligayahan, Novaliches, Quezon City

Proposal
A. Basic Information

Project Title: Fingerprint Biometric student Attendance System with database

using”Xampp mySql” VB.net & arduino for classroom needs

Topic/Keywords : fingerprint, Biometric, database, Vb.net, arduino, classroom

attendance, portable attendance system

Researchers: Mohamed basheer K P ,

Department of Electronics and Communications Engineering,
National Institute of Technology Calicut,Kerela, India.
Email. [email protected]
Raghu C V,
Department of Electronics and Communications Engineering,
National Institute of Technology Calicut,Kerela, India.
[email protected]

B. Technical Description

Background of the Study:

Fingerprint attendance system aims to automate the attendance procedure
of an educational institution using biometric technology. This will save time
wasted on calling out names and it gives a fool-proof method of attendance
marking, a hand-held device is used to mark the attendance without the
intervention of teacher. The device can be passed and students can mark
attendance during the lecture time. students would be made to place their
finger over the sensor so as to mark their presence in class.it can
communicate with a host computer using its USB interface. This device
operates from a rechargeable battery, GUI application in host computer helps
the teacher to manage the device and attendance.

Fingerprint verification is a very convenient and reliable way to verify the

person’s identity. It is believed that no two people have identical fingerprint in
this world, so, the fingerprint verification and identification is the most popular
way to verify the authenticity or identity of a person. Out of all the variety of
the biometric technologies for the information security solutions the best
appropriate seems to be the use of the systems based on fingerprints scanning
and recognition. This method, in comparison with others is cheaper, more
convenient in day to day use, and is known to have very low false
acceptance rate

Objectives: General and Specific Objective:

The aim of the study is to design and develop a reliable, scalable and cost
effective fingerprint based student attendance monitoring system
 Easily and fast tracking of student’s attendance.
 To minimize time consumption of finding attendance in a sheet of
paper.
 To minimize time consumption in signing of students activity card.
 To provide a graph to monitor the most attending department in every
school.
 To secure the students attendance in every school.
 To implement the design using Microsoft Visual Basic.net.
 Crete a system that assist the administrator in printing the attendance
report of each class
 Build a secure system, which allows safe access by applied biometric
technology

How did others solve the problem?(15 articles)

1. During 1858, the first recorded systematic capture of hand and finger
images for identification purposes was used by Sir William Herschel, Civil
Service of India, who recorded a handprint on the back of a contract
for each worker to distinguish employees (Komarinski, 2004)
2. During 1870, Alphonse Bertillon developed a method of identifying
individuals based on detailed records of their body measurements,
physical descriptions and photographs. This method was termed as
“Bertillonage” or anthropometrics and the usage was aborted in 1903
when it was discovered that some people share same measurements
 and physical characteristics (State University of New York at Canton,
2003).
3. Sir Francis Galton, in 1892, developed a classification system for
fingerprints using minutiae characteristics that is being used by
researchers and educationalists even today. Sir Edward Henry, during
1896, paved way to the success of fingerprint recognition by using
Galton's theory to identify prisoners by their fingerprint impressions. He
devised a classification system that allowed thousands of fingerprints to
be easily filed, searched and traced. He helped in the first establishment
of fingerprint bureau in the same year and his method gained
worldwide acceptance for identifying criminals (Scottish Criminal
Record Office, 2002).
4. The concept of using iris pattern for identification was first proposed by
Ophthalmologist Frank Burch in 1936 (Iradian Technologies, 2003). During
1960, the first semi-automatic face recognition system was developed
by Woodrow W. Bledsoe, which used the location of eyes, ears, nose
and mouth on the photographs for recognition purposes. In the same
year, the first model of acoustic speech production was creased by a
Swedish Professor, Gunnar Fant. His invention is used in today's speaker
recognition system (Woodward et al, 2003).
5. The first automated signature recognition system was developed by
North American Aviation during 1965 (Mauceri, 1965). This technique
was later, in 1969, used by Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in their
investigations to reduce man hours invested in the analysis of signatures.
The year 1970 introduced face recognition towards authentication.
Goldstein et al. (1971) used 21 specific markers such as hair color, lip
thickness to automate the recognition process. The main disadvantage
of such a system was that all these features were manually identified
and computed.
6. During the same period, Dr.Joseph Perkell produced the first behavioral
components of speech to identify a person (Woodward et al, 2003). The
 first commercial hand geometry system was made available in 1974 for
physical access control, time and attendance and personal
identification. The success of this first biometric automated system
motivated several funding agencies like FBI Fund, NIST for the
development of scanners and feature extraction technology (Ratha
and Bolle, 2004), which will finally lead to the development of a perfect
human recognizer. This resulted in the first prototype of speaker
recognition system in 1976, which was developed by Texas instruments
and was tested by US Air Force and the MITRE Corporation. In 1996, the
hand geometry was implemented successfully at the Olympic Games
and the system implemented was able to handle the enrollment of over
65,000 people.
7. Drs. Leonard Flom and Aran Safir, in 1985, found out that no two irises
are alike and their findings were awarded a patent during 1986. In the
year 1988, the first semi-automated facial recognition system was
deployed by Lakewood Division of Los Angeles Country Sheriff's
Department for identifying suspects (Angela, 2009). This was followed by
several land marked contributiona by Sirovich and Kirby (1989), Turk and
Pentland (1991), Philipis et al. (2000) in the field of face recognition.
8. the next stage in fingerprint automation occurred at the end of 1994
with the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS)
36 competition. The competition identified and investigated three major
challenges: (1) digital fingerprint acquisition (2) local ridge characteristic
extraction and (3) ridge characteristic pattern matching (David et al.,
2005).
9. The first Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) was
developed by Palm System in 1993. During 1995, the iris biometric was
officially released as a commercial authentication tool by Defense
Nuclear Agency and Iriscan.
10. The year 2000 envisaged the first face recognition vendor test (FRVT,
2000) sponsored by the US Government agencies and the same year
 paved way for the first research paper on the use of vascular patterns
for recognition (Im et al., 2001). During 2003, ICAO (International civil
Aviation Organization) adopted blueprints for the integration of
biometric identification information into passports and other Machine
Readable Travel Documents (MRTDs). Facial recognition was selected
as the globally interoperable biometric for machine-assisted identity
confirmation with MRTDs.
11. The first statewide automated palm print database was deployed by
the US in 2004. The Face Recognition Grand Challenge (FRGC) began in
the same year to improve the identification problem. In 2005, Iris on the
move was announced by Biometric Consortium Conference for
enabling the collection of iris images from individuals walking through a
portal.
12. The first modern use of fingerprints occurred in 1856 when Sir William
Herschel, the Chief Magistrate of the Hooghly district in Jungipoor, India,
had a local businessman, Rajyadhar Konai, impress his handprint on the
back of a contract. Later, the right index and middle fingers were
printed next to the signature on all contracts made with the locals. The
purpose was to frighten the signer of repudiating the contract because
the locals believed that personal contact with the document made it
more binding. As his fingerprint collection grew, Sir Herschel began to
realize that fingerprints could prove or disprove identity. Despite his lack
of scientific knowledge in fingerprinting he was convinced that
fingerprints are unique and permanent throughout life.
13. The French anthropologist, Alphonse Bertillon, devised the first widely
accepted scientific method of biometric identification in 1870. The
Bertillon system, Bertillonage, or anthropometry was not based on
fingerprinting but relied on a systematic combination of physical
measurements. These, among others, included measurements of the
skull width, foot length, and the length of the left middle finger
combined with hair color, eye color, as well as face and profile pictures.
 By grouping the data any single person could be placed into one of 243
distinct categories. For the next thirty years, Bertillonage was the primary
method of biometric identification.
14. Dr. Henry Faulds, British Surgeon-Superintendent of the Tsukiji Hospital in
Tokyo, took up the study of fingerprints in the 1870’s after noticing finger
imprints on prehistoric pottery. In 1880, in the October 28 issue of the
British scientific periodical Nature, Dr. Faulds was the first to publish a
scientific account of the use of fingerprint as a means of identification.
In addition to recognizing the importance of fingerprints, for
identification he devised a method of classification as well. Dr. Faulds is
credited for the first fingerprint identification-based on a fingerprint left
on an alcohol bottle. The method of classification proposed by Dr.
Faulds is called Henry Classification system and is based on patterns
such as loops and whorls, which is still used today to organize fingerprint
card files.
15. Continuing the work of Dr. Faulds, Sir William Herschel and Sir Francis
Galton established the individuality and permanence of fingerprints. This
book, “Fingerprints” from 1892, contains the first fingerprint classification
system containing three basic pattern types: loop, arch, and whorl. The
system was based on the distribution of the pattern types on the ten
fingers, e.g. LLAWL LWWLL. The system worked, but was yet to be
improved with a classification that was easier to administer. Sir Galton
identified the characteristics used for personal identification, the unique
ridge characteristics known as minutiae, which are often referred to as
“Galton’s details”.
16. In 1892, Juan Vecetich, an Argentine Police official, made the first
criminal fingerprint identification. He was able to identify a woman, who
had murdered her two sons and cut her own throat in an attempt to
avoid blame. Her bloody print was left on a doorpost, proving her
identity as the murderer.
How do you intend to solve the problem:
No time waste as the attendance is taken during lecture without intervention of
teacher,
managing the attendance is automated
No chance for fake attendance marking

Target users / Beneficiaries:(Describe each Beneficiary)

Contribution to Administrator/Lecturer

The administrator or lecturer can check the record and attendance

trend of students. This can contribute to important decision such as
determining students to sit for their final exam. The automatically
calculation of percentage attendance is the important feature in this
system. This can contribute to accuracy in the calculation process.
Moreover, this application can improve the teaching lesson going
smoothly.

Contribution to Student

students face a lot of difficulties to get the attendance sheet to sign

their attendance. This project manages the student attendance as an
alternative solution from the manual way of sign in attendance to
computerized method. students only need to sign their attendance by
using fingerprint on prepared equipment. In the real situation, students
usually help their friends to sign the attendance without attending the
lecture, by applying the uniqueness of fingerprint technology in
attendance management, it gives an advantage to validate and
record the attended student. This feature has given better alternative
for student and also for the lecturer if compared to the manually way of
sign in attendance which is time consuming and involves
uncomfortable learning process.
Significance of study:
The system for students using fingerprint biometric will eliminate the use of
paper in manual signing processes and all the risk associated with it. One of
the risks of using a paper in class attendance is that it can be easily misplaced
and students cheat by signing for each other not present in class thereby
defeating the aim of taking the attendance. Tracking and monitoring students
time of attendance could be tedious, time consuming and susceptible to
error. Thus, the system will drastically reduce time needed to verify attendance
data.

The system also allows the institution management to track or investigate

student class attendance in a particular course having poor attendance
thereby enabling the management to rectify the situation by providing the
necessary interventions. The system provide high level of security whereby
making it impossible for imposters and impersonators in making their ways to
examination halls. The system using biometric fingerprint will keep historical
data making it easy for lecturers to access and grade students.