California-based defense contractor and facial recognition specialist StereoVision Imaging (“SVI”) has announced the issuance of eight continuation patents for its technological portfolio.

In a statement, the company said it is “significantly growing its U.S. and international patent portfolio” pertaining to Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) LiDAR technology. This is SVI’s speciality, with the company’s approach essentially being to use multiple laser beams to assess at least two aspects of a target’s motion. This means that when SVI’s technology is used to scan a face, for example, it can establish a 20,000-point grid for facial mapping with each point of the grid encoded with range and velocity data, allowing it to scan quickly and accurately even when the face is moving.

This technology can be used in applications beyond facial recognition. Autonomous cars, for example, can use it to detect other vehicles and pedestrians and their movement; as SVI President Gregory Steinthal explained in a statement announcing the new patents, the technology “is absolutely crucial to instantly recognize other vehicles or objects moving towards them allowing for faster and more accurate decision making efforts to avoid collisions.”

Other potential applications can be found in physiological assessments pertaining to breathing and heart rates, robotics, and more, SVI says. And the company is looking to expand beyond the government sector, inviting corporate strategic partners to inquire about licensing its FMCW LiDAR technology or “assisting in SVI’s growth opportunities” in various business areas.

SVI says it now has a portfolio of over a hundred patents and patents pending worldwide.

(Originally posted on FindBiometrics)