Security Technology Research and Development

Research group at Faculty of Information Technology, Brno University of Technology
Research group STRaDe is a part of Department of Intelligent Systems at Faculty of Information Technology of Brno University of Technology. Main focus of the STRaDe group is research and development in the field of security technologies with accent on both hardware and software aspects. Security technologies involve wide spectra of applications and devices. Huge area, which we are interested in, is biometrics whereas we focus nearly on all up to date technologies and metrics - for example acquisition and recognition of fingerprints, eye irises and eye retinas, 3D faces and 3D hands, vein patterns, liveness detection of various biometric characteristics, etc.
The second and no less important part of our research is area of sensoric systems and its application in robotics which is our particular research aim itself. In connection with robotics and biometrics research in area of complex intelligent systems is done. Next part of our research activities is video processing and its implementation in hardware (including acceleration in hardware), where it takes a place as computer vision for various systems and applications.

 NEWS

Sangeeta is flying home
2020-08-26, published by Jan Tinka

Sangeeta has spent the last two years with us here in STRaDe doing research on retinal image processing and has become not only our colleague but also a friend. After this time her stay here finally came to an end and Sangeeta is flying back home, to Bangladesh. She might be leaving permanently, but if everything goes well Sangeeta will return to us once again next year in spring. In the meantime we wish her all the best while we now must get accustomed to her absence from our lab where she had been a constant presence.

High School Students on a Field Trip to STRaDe
2020-07-13, published by Jan Tinka

South Moravian high school students interested in learning more about the STRaDe research group and biometry visited us as a part of the T-exkurze  – a field trip project organised by the JCMM . Martin Drahanský introduced them to the topic of biometry in his informative lecture after which we welcomed the students in our biometric lab. There we gave them the opportunity to explore some of the techniques and technologies used in biometry but also to experience them firsthand. We hope that they liked it here and that in future some of them might decide to join us.

Assoc. Prof. Waleed Abdulla visited our group
2019-11-12, published by Jan Tinka

Assoc. Prof. Waleed Abdulla  of University of Auckland visited our STRaDe research group as a part of a sabbatical leave. Here he attended to the mathematical apparatus of selected disertation topics. Consultations and discussions between us will likely result in more than a single publication. Assoc. Prof. Abdulla specialises in human biometry, signal and speech processing, hyperspectral imaging applications and more.

Our Members at Summer School of Biometry
2019-06-20, published by Jan Tinka

Martin Sakin and Jan Tinka spent a week at a biometry summer school organized by professor Massimo Tistarelli in Alghero in Sardinia, where they attended lectures and took part in discussions on topics ranging from person recognition based on iris to recognition based on gait patterns. The main topic of this year’s summer school was not only biometry but also application of deep learning methods and other machine learning for biometric purposes. Martin and Jan therefore returned from the school endowed with new knowledge, which will be helpful for their dissertation and research.

Media

 AREAS OF INTEREST

Biometrics

Biometrics

Biometrics includes many interesting topics. We focus mainly, but not only, at fingerprints. Other topics we deal with belong the iris and retina recognition and recognition based on 3D scans of face or hand. A big part of our research is focused at liveness detection and sensor quality analysis.

Biomedicine

Biomedicine

Biomedical applications are very closely related to the biometric systems. The biggest emphasis in STRaDe is put on detection and recognition of skin diseases on fingers and retina diseases. These areas are important for us, since they are part of biometric technologies we are dealing currently with.

Robotics

Robotics

Robotics has not been our main focus. However, we needed a platform to present and proove functionality of our computer vision algorithms and we applied for a robotic grant then, hence we accepted very challenging task to create our own platform, which would be useful for rescue teams of all sorts. Result of this is our robotic unit RUDA.

Computer Vision

Computer Vision

Computer vision is very tightly related to biometric systems, since you need to acquire an image from a camera system to get biometric features in most cases. Even the basic principles of data processing are very similar to algorithms and techniques of the computer vision.

 CURRENT RESEARCH

Liveness Detection

Our research of the liveness detection aims at biometric technologies based on the fingerprints, finger or hand veins, face and eye. In this field we registered a few patents and utility models.

Recognition of eye diseases

Research of the eye diseases recognition is aimed at recognition of symptoms of various eye diseases in an image of iris and retina, where are the symptoms to be recognised best.

Influence of the skin disease on the fingerprint recognition

In 2008 we started dealing with issues of influence of various finger skin diseases on the fingerprint recognition process. To improve our knowledge and to base it on reliable information, especially from the medical point of view, we made fingerprint skin diseases our common cause with the dermatologists from St. Anne's University Hospital Brno, University Hospital Olomouc and a private dermatological clinic in Darmstadt (Germany).

Fingerprint Spoofs

Research and creation of fingerprint spoofs for testing liveness detectors and used fingerprint sensors.

Synthetic Fingerprints

New methods of specific damage of synthetic fingerprints and their usage.

Map of the world

INTERNATIONAL PARTNERS

Within our research activities we cooperate with many academic partners. In the following list there are some of them:

 RESULTS

SOFTWARE

Speckle Tracking Echocardiography

Speckle Tracking Echocardiography

SW for extraction of features from retina scan

SW for extraction of features from retina scan

Automatic number plate recognition system

Automatic number plate recognition system

Microscopic data analyzer

Microscopic data analyzer

Face recognition from a quadcopter

Face recognition from a quadcopter

Module for face thermo-images processing

Module for face thermo-images processing

Anonymizer

Anonymizer

Simulation of face scanning

Simulation of face scanning

Image dataset generation from a 3D model

Image dataset generation from a 3D model

HARDWARE

sAOTS

sAOTS

EYRINA

EYRINA

RUDA

RUDA

3D Hand Scanner

3D Hand Scanner

FAS-OT-3D

FAS-OT-3D

Minisumo

Minisumo

VIPROS

VIPROS

ISTA

ISTA

Multi-sensor board for a drone

Multi-sensor board for a drone

 STRaDe TEAM

Martin Drahanský

Martin Drahanský
Professor at the BUT FIT, Principal Researcher of the STRaDe group

Martin began his research activities in 2000 in a year project oriented on fingerprint processing. Furthermore, his MSc. thesis was devoted to the comparison of fingerprints and biometric templates compression. In 2001 he graduated at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science BUT and simultaneously at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering Fernuniversität in Hagen (Germany). His Ph.D. thesis was focused on generating cryptographic keys from fingerprints, which he defended in 2005 at the Faculty of Information Technology BUT. In 2009, Martin successfully defended his habilitation - his thesis covered again various topics in the field of fingerprints. In 2017 he was promoted to a full professor. Martin worked from 2002 to 2005 at the University of Siegen, Institute of Measurement Technology (Germany) and also collaborated with the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft IGD in Darmstadt (Germany). In 2014, he went on sabbatical to the Tokyo Institute of Technology (Japan) for half a year. In recent years, he is focusing on areas related with biometric systems - processing of image and video, sensory systems (incl. robotics) and IT security. Finally, it is worth to mention his leisure activities - judo, mountain bike, ferratas, fitness and mineralogy + entomology.
Filip Orság

Filip Orság
Assistant Professor at the BUT FIT, co-leader of STRaDe

Filip has been studying at BUT since 1996. In 2001 he graduated at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. During the MSc study he spent one year in Germany studying and finishing his diploma thesis at the Fachhochschule Wiesbaden. Then, he decided to go in in the academic career and started his Ph.D. studies, which he had finished in 2004. After that he decided for the academic career and successfully applied for an assistant professor position at BUT. Since Filip's master studies he has been interested in artificial intelligence. In the field of biometry he started with research in the area of speech recognition and later speaker recognition, too. In 2009 he co-funded together with Martin research group STRaDe and obtained grant aimed at computer vision and later another grant aimed at robotics. These events changed goals and field of Filip's research areas from speech to applied artificial intelligence mainly in the field of computer vision result of which are semi-autonomous optical tracking system sAOTS and robot RUDA.
Tomáš Goldmann
Assistant - Ph.D. Student
Tomas has been studying at FIT BUT since 2010. After he graduated he decided to continue with post graduate study under the leadership of Martin. In the field of biometry he started the research which is focused on people identification from a video. His bachelor's thesis was on the topic of tracking Perimeter Monitoring and Intrusion Detection Based on Camera Surveillance. His other interests include artificial intelligence, low-level programming and parallel computing. In the year 2016 he was researching dependency of the head position on the face detection.
Sangeeta Biswas
Researcher
She joined STRaDe as a researcher in June, 2018. Currently she is working on deep learning for retinal image processing. She secured her Ph.D. degree in 2016 from Tokyo Institute of Technology (TokyoTech), Japan, on speaker recognition. In 2015, she became an Assistant Professor of University of Rajshahi, Bangladesh.
Radim Pernický
Assistant - Ph.D. student
Radim finished studies at FAST BUT in 2000. After completing his studies he worked in several companies and in 2006 he joined the police ranks where he is the forensic expert and coordinator of the dactyloscopy for three regions in Czech Republic. From 2018 he is a student of a doctoral study program at FIT BUT. He professionally focuses on fingerprint technology.
Mona Heidari
Assistant - Ph.D. Student
Mona joined FIT BUT in 2016. Her research interests are biometrics, machine learning and deep learning. She started to work in biometrics by analyzing diseases and other influences affecting fingerprints. Currently, as a part of the STRaDe team, she is working on the tools and computational/measurement framework to accurately detect, localize and recognize diseases in fingerprints.
Michal Dvořák
Assistant - Ph.D. student
Michal is a BUT student since late 2010. During bachelor and master’s program he became interested in developing camera systems and computer vision. He now explores the possible uses of his interests in the field of biometrics.
Martin Sakin
Assistant - Ph.D. Student
Martin is a Ph.D. student since 2018. Since his master's studies he tries to bring intelligence into intelligent systems. He has been involved in the development of the home-based system and is now focusing on data analysis and searching for other sources of information.
Lukáš Semerád
Assistant - Ph.D. Student
Lukáš has been an assistant at BUT FIT since 2014. Since Lukáš's bachelor studies he has been interested in artificial intelligence. In the field of biometry he started with research in the area of eye retina and iris recognition. He interensts about retina segmentation.
Jan Tinka
Assistant - Ph.D. student
Jan has been studying at FIT BUT since 2012 and has earned both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees here. In his dissertations he focused on augmented and virtual reality. Jan joined STRaDe in autumn of 2018. Currently, he is exploring the area of brain-computer interfaces in which he’d like to incorporate his deep interests in psychology and artificial intelligence while staying in the field he’s already familiar with.
Dominik Malčík
Assistant - Ph.D. Student
Dominik has become STRaDe member in 2008 when he started working in area of hardware security. Nowadays, he is mainly targeting at finishing his dissertation thesis with focus on hardware analysis of microchips.
Onřej Kanich
Assistant Professor
Ondřej joined the group in 2014. While working on his master’s and doctoral thesis he primarily focused on damage simulation of synthetic fingerprints and other theoretical and practical areas related to fingerprints. In 2019 Ondřej got the Ph.D. degree and the next year he was accepted as an assistant professor. His research activities revolve around fingerprints, but besides biometry he's also interested in simulations and AI.

 TEAM EVENTS

Team Building in Ramzová
2020-05-04

One Friday we took just our most needed possessions and traveled to a remote location in the beautiful Eastern Sudetes (Jesenická oblast) to spend the weekend teambuilding under the professional supervision of Pavlína Langerová from Audica s.r.o. There were no computers or time to use them as there was always something on the schedule of indoor and outdoor activities, which included personality tests, lectures and team plank-ski walking. This was tiringly refreshing. In between teambuilding activities lot of Kofola was drank and fried cheese eaten that weekend. Some of us seized the opportunity to hike down the nearby mountain Šerák. In the unexpectedly clear sunny weather the sights we saw were astounding and made the experience the highlight of the weekend and the icing on the cake.

Escape Game
2019-11-12

We wanted to take it easy for a moment; that's why we decided to get on a track of a serial killer and identify their next victim so that we could save them. After completing many riddles and puzzles we managed just that with about a ten minute leadway. It seemed that some puzzles had nothing to do with the case, but despite that, or because of that, we enjoyed a nice afternoon with our escape from reality while playing this escape game.

Hike to Babí Lom Hill
2019-07-17

Since it had been quite a while since we last went to nature, we decided to take it easy with a comfortable climb of approximately 250 metres of elevation difference and jumping around the rocky Babí lom, which is close to a nearby town Lelekovice. Those of us who were feeling more adventurous took an even more action-packed, more rocky and less traveled path to Spálená skála rock. Even though the expected and allowed casualties were 1.5 group members, we didn't lose anybody (for too long), nobody got hurt and we even enjoyed the trip!

Disc Golf
2019-05-09

Everyone knows well the situation where every once in a while one wakes up in the morning and they and their friends just think of the exact same idea independent of each other. That didn’t happen to us. However, we were still able to agree that the time has come to entertain ourselves with something like golf, but less classy. Flatter. That’s why during one of the first warm sunny days we went out to play some disc golf. We were quite successful. Especially those who took the growing number of strokes as a good thing. Afterwards, we enjoyed an outdoor lunch in a restaurant.

Shooting
2019-03-05

While it is hard to believe, some of us not only hadn't owned any firearms but had also never held one in their hands. We needed to remedy that, which is why all the enthusiasts headed off to a shooting range to be embraced by the smell of gunpowder and some serious rumble, source of which could everyone choose to their liking.

Board Games
2019-03-04

One of the activities that most of us like to do are board games. That's why we decided to organize board games with friends in the cozy premises of the former student club. We ordered a meal that we could enjoy with a varied selection of drinks, even those of us who did not play any game at all. We played games only at the end of the event, the beginning and the middle was more oriented on discussion.

Laser Game
2019-02-25

After a long winter we decided there is nothing better than to get ourselves warm with a healthy exercise. That's why we again decided for running around frantically in a dark room while shooting lasers at each other with aggressive music and the flashing light of our vests enhancing the atmosphere. Not a single T-shirt stayed dry.

Christmas Party
2019-01-20

We gathered before Christmas so we could celebrate the end of the year together and say bye to each other before many of us travel home. We met at a pub in a cozy room with a fireplace, ate delicious food drank delicious drinks and, to help with the entertainment, we brought our favourite board games.

 CONTACTS