Guest Editorial: Biometrics in Industry 4.0: Open Challenges and Future Perspectives

THE paradigm of Industry 4.0 aims at reinventing procedures and business strategies in all industrial/factory fields. On the other hand, such a renovation generates massive amounts of data, lying from traditional tracking information of goods and services but also source codes, technology information, and intellectual property. This represents a serious threat for corporations that must invest, more than in the past, in protocols and procedures to keep their data secure from being stolen or widespread over networks. Therefore, this special section is devoted to selected papers focused on open challenges in the context of security and safety of Biometrics in Industry 4.0. Strong authentication mechanisms represent the key to ensure such a high level of security of data and biometrics may play a crucial role in this scenario. Biometric traits, both physical and behavioral, can be used to build up strong authentication platforms and infrastructure of trust enabling big corporations to protect their data against criminal attacks. On the other hand, the use of authentication mechanisms based on biometric solutions can often collide with national and international regulations which tend to protect sensitive information. While the use of biometrics for security can be developed in full awareness of the users, in case of safety the collection of biometric data concerns a more subtle concept of privacy. In a private context, the security aims at guaranteeing controlled access/use to spaces and devices for a limited number of users. In public, is the safety to be guaranteed, involving a wider number of users whose biometrics data need to be acquired and protected. The ethical and practical implication of the use of biometrics data in safety needs to be further explored. The choice of the biometric traits (either hard or soft) as well as the mechanism to put in place to protect those data and the user’s privacy ask for meticulous studies of the minimum number of traits to be involved in the monitored environment to achieve systems that are privacy preserving as well as robust and reliable. Augmented reality applications have been intensively promoted by Industry 4.0 but their usage in operative environments is not free from risks for employees and trainees. The analysis of behavioral biometric traits, and soft biometrics in general, can provide useful estimations on postures and gestures during augmented reality training sessions. They can be used to assess the suitability of the augmented reality application and indicate excessive physical workload that may attempt personnel safety.