Jerusalem-based start-up OptIDtech - Optical Identification Technologies originally designed its electro-optic barcode readers and cards/labels for long-range identification technology in the automobile market. Then came September 11, 2001.
OptID’s reader is a passive optical transponder that flashes safe infrared light at cards or labels and captures their images with digital cameras up to a distance of 20 meters. The systems uses proprietary encrypted 2D barcodes to authenticate and identify the cards and labels.
The system’s features made the technology, originally designed for parking lots, into a security application at a time when security budgets are only going up. Security applications require a very high degree of anti-forgery and anti-fraud assurance. The cards are printed with un-forgeable invisible ink and encased in tamper-proof plastic cards or labels with a proprietary micro-optical material. Authentication and verification levels can be raised as needed.
OptID was founded by CEO Avishai Drori and CTO Prof. Naftali Eisenberg in 1999. Eisenberg heads the Jerusalem Center for Non-Conventional Optics, where many Israeli optical companies test their devices. Drori, a physicist and electro-optical systems engineer served in Israel Air Force’s development programs.
In the late 1990s, Drori decided to found his own company. A chance meeting with Eisenberg, under whom Drori had studied 20 years earlier, revealed that he had similar ambitions, and the result was OptID. They were recently joined by Lior Lifshitz, a founder of ProSeed Venture Capital fund, who became OptID co-CEO.
OptID’s technology uses optical scanners to automatically identify moving objects at a distance, without contact, with a high degree of assurance. The company claims its technology is better current radio frequency identification (RFID)-based technologies used on toll roads. OptID claims its technology is much harder to forge. RFID, for instance, is inadmissible as evidence in court.
OptID’s founders claim their product is the only optical barcode reader that works in both daylight and nightime conditions, in all weather, at a distance of up to 20 meters. It can be used in areas where RFID is banned or unusable, such as high-security areas or areas where there is interference from communications noise, radio frequencies or high-tension power lines. The US armed forces do not allow RFID systems at its bases, for example.
The use of infrared rather than lasers makes the light beams safe to the eyes of users and passers-by. The identification system also distinguishes only the label, while ignoring extraneous factors, such as the sun, refractions from other bodies, rain, snow, etc. OptID claims the result is near-100% reading, identification and authentication of labels at a distance. False positive errors are minimal. The labels can be used in combination with other ID and smart card technologies, such as magnetic codes, microchips and RFID.
OptID has raised about $1 million to date from GenuOne of Boston, a provider of proactive brand-security solutions; and Tel Aviv Stock Exchange-listed Pitkit Technologies. The company has just raised capital from a private source, and is negotiating a $1.5-2 million investment.
In conjunction with a local integration company, OptID installed an operational pilot system at an East Coast US airport in April 2002. Drori and Lifshitz said the pilot was successful and the company was negotiating with the state’s airport and railroad authorities to install the system at the airport’s cargo gates, and later at other airports.
The pilot system was also successfully tested at a major US Navy base, as part of a joint project with a leading US defense contractor. OptID hopes to receive orders for financed demonstration projects and soon have sales. The company is now readying to manufacture its products to meet expected demand.
OptID believes that its identification and authentication technology can be made suitable for cargo. In September, the company demonstrated an automatic cargo identification application that read scores of labels in a single picture in preparation to enter this field.
Published by Globes [online] - www.globes.co.il - on October 1, 2002