Iris scan technology yet to take off.

• Position: Biometrics

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* TAMPA, Fla. -- Fans of thriller movies are familiar with the high-tech iris scanners that read an eyeball and allow access to super secret facilities in the basements of shadowy Washington spy agencies.

What seemed like science fiction in the 1980s is science fact now.

A quick stroll around the exhibition hall at the recent Biometrics Consortium conference here found about a dozen vendors eager to sell the technology.

But where are the customers? So far, the government is driving the development of iris scanners and other biometric technologies, said Jerry Thames, executive advisor to Booz

Allen Hamilton.

"There's a paucity of investment in the private sector," he said. "When is somebody going to buy something?"

There are numerous applications for iris scanners, especially when verifying identities in the banking sector and for computer users who want to cut down on fraud, he said. But the technology is far from being ubiquitous.

Cyber-criminals are becoming more sophisticated and there is a hunger in the market for spoof proof ways to verify the identity of online users, he said.

Iris scan advocates have long touted the benefits of the technology over fingerprints. The user does not need to make contact with a surface, for example.

John Aceti, senior director of business development at Sarnoff Corp., is responsible for finding customers in the non-government market.

"We see it as a business that will take off, but not yet," he said. "There are fascinating niche applications have come along that will result in hundreds and tens of thousands of [units sold] per year," he said. Due to confidentiality agreements, he would not reveal who the customers were, or even what sector they are in. He would only say that they aren't the traditional security applications.

Sarnoff is an engineering firm, and normally doesn't do manufacturing, but to tap into these niche applications, it is going to start making products, he said.

Sarnoff developed the Iris-on-the-Move scanner, which reads irises from standoff distances as the subject walks through a portal or drives past a reader.

Brian Rhea, director of corporate communications at Aoptix Technologies, said the acceptance of iris scanners so far has been hindered by the difficulty users have lining up their eyes with the readers.

The company is selling an InSight 2 meter standoff iris recognition system that automatically finds the subject within a large capture zone, tracks the...