Schneider Electric has developed a fingerprint-activated industrial switch which, it claims, overcomes drawbacks with other access control systems, such as passwords being forgotten, or keys being lost or copied. It says that the Harmony Biometric fingerprint recognition device (below) will accept more than 98% of correct fingerprints first time, and has a false acceptance rate of less than 0.1%.

The IP65-protected switch, which fits in a standard 22mm cut-out, takes less than one second to authenticate a fingerprint and to authorise or reject access. It can store details of 200 fingerprints, allowing each operator to store details of different fingers, if required.