Telos

First Place (Tied)

Total value of prizes received through the mFIT Challenge: $115,750

Phase 1: $8,500

Phase 2: First Place (tied, $101,000) and First Responder Choice Award (tied, $6,250)

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About the team

The Telos Identity Technology Innovation (ITI) team of engineers and innovators focuses on producing breakthrough biometric and identity-focused solutions on personal mobile devices using the latest emerging technologies. For over 10 years as an authorized FBI Channeler, Telos has provided innovative fingerprint identity and enrollment solutions for the Department of Defense, the Transportation Security Administration, the U.S. Census Bureau, and many other government and private organizations worldwide.

Key team members

Charles (Chace) Hatcher, Team Lead
Charles is the former CEO and founder of Diamond Fortress Technologies, Inc. (DFT), inventors of touchless fingerprint biometrics software for smartphones and other mobile devices. He is the co-inventor with Will Lucas of touchless biometric technology patents. At Telos, Charles continues to revolutionize security for mobile devices in many applications such as mobile payments, banking applications, law enforcement and corrections, and healthcare.

Mac Funchess, Project Manager
Mac primarily works in the project management capacity and specializes in marketing support. He studied computer graphics in college and worked as a software engineer.

Keith Wojciech, Technical Lead
With 20+ years of experience as a product manager, tech lead, network engineer, and systems administrator, Keith has designed, developed, implemented, and maintained many enterprise cloud and on-prem biometric-based cybersecurity and identity management solutions for government and commercial entities, including the FBI, TSA, USCB, and many airports and airlines. With an MBA in technology management, he is a skilled and versatile technologist, innovator, writer, blockchain enthusiast, and problem solver.

Allan Neuhaus, Strategy Manager
Allan has significant experience as a key project planner and risk leader specializing in efficiency analysis and developing and managing strategic plans for software development. He is an expert in the Agile and Scaled Agile Framework methodologies and implementing them within varying environments to achieve maximum business agility.

Will Lucas, Chief Engineer
With both a BS and MS in computer science, Will took Chace Hatcher’s vision at DFT and turned it into reality. Specializing in machine learning and computer vision, he was tailor-made to be the chief engineer for ITI at Telos and brings his vast expertise to the company.

Chris Wheatley, Developer
Chris is an experienced Java microservices developer within the Spring Boot and Android frameworks and unit tester using JUnit and various Javascript test frameworks. He is an Intermediate Javascript developer using AWS technologies, including Lambda, AppSync, Amplify, GraphQL, Cloudformation, Cognito, and Elasticsearch. He has Auth0 experience for user pools and novice Azure development with CosmosDB Graphdb using Gremlin. 

Matt Wheatley, Developer
Matt is a full stack Javascript developer specializing in Amazon Web Services and hybrid mobile application development using AWS Amplify and Ionic framework/AngularJS. He developed the first and most utilized Cordova plugin for using the hardware fingerprint sensor for Android devices. He has experience creating Cordova plugins using Java and Objective-C.

Tim Frazier, Developer
Tim is a full stack JavaScript developer with experience using Ionic and Angular frameworks, AWS, Node.js, HTML/CSS/JavaScript. He is an experienced process engineer skilled in AutoCAD, SolidWorks, root cause analysis, continuous improvement, and technical writing.

John Spell, Product Owner
John works as a product owner and quality control engineer, and provides development team support for Telos touchless fingerprinting-related solutions. He studied civil engineering in college.

Alec Hoggan, Product Owner
Alec works as a product owner and quality control engineer, and provides development team support for Telos touchless fingerprinting-related solutions. He studied cognitive science in college.

The solution

Telos Shield is an innovative, law enforcement-focused mobile device application designed specifically for the NIST mFIT Challenge; it is powered by Telos’ touchless mobile device fingerprinting system and software development kit (SDK), ONYX. Telos’s patented technology involves methods to convert a finger image capture, process accurate images, and compare them to a predefined template such as touch-based livescan devices. The core of Telos Shield is the ONYX SDK which captures high-quality digital fingerprint images, leveraging existing camera sensors in various field conditions using commercially available off-the-shelf (COTS) mobile devices at consistently high-efficacy rates.

Key highlights

• Telos Shield is powered by the ONYX SDK, which works on multiple mobile platforms
  • Image Capture - ONYX users Telos’s proprietary neural network, CaptureNet, to detect the fingers in the camera field of view, automatically capture them once they’re in focus, and segment each fingertip into a separate image file.
  • Image Processing - ONYX Core performs a normalization method on the captured images to return high contrast, high resolution, accurate fingerprint images.
  • WSQ On-Device – Integrated into the ONYX library is the ability to perform high-speed image compression via a NIST standard Wavelet Scalar Quantization algorithm on iOS or Android.
  • Image Output – ONYX contains methods to retrieve the fingerprint imagery for processing, storage, or transmission in various formats
  • AFIS Interoperability – The ONYX SDK provides several functions to facilitate integration with third-party on-server matching algorithms, and matching against enrollments from touch-based sensors, commonly found in an AFIS environment
  • The ONYX SDK is a fully customizable contactless fingerprint verification solution. Based on client specifications, the user interface application can be developed by Telos, or through a third-party license agreement, to integrate ONYX.
• The Telos Shield app utilizes the mobile device’s GPS and camera to gather additional identifying data, such as face images or documents. It can save to multiple databases, cloud servers, local, LAN, etc.
• The app automatically identifies which finger is captured and includes a verification feature to send fingerprint/face images for comparison to databases.
• The app will automatically request a recapture if the image is of poor quality. Users can also manually request to redo a capture.