Ride-hailing app
Uber on Thursday launched a facial recognition ID approval system for drivers that will require them to take a selfie before accepting rides.
The move is to avoid duplication of driver details and to curb impersonation by unregistered drivers.
The features have been rolled out in cities of Delhi, Kolkata, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Pune, and Lucknow and will be rolled out to other cities too.
“At every step, we are maximising the usage of technology to bring transparency and accountability through several features, which we believe will have a positive impact on riders and driver partners,” Apurva Dalal, Head of Engineering, Uber India, added.
The IT backend for the ID validation of a driver has been designed to support even low-end feature phones.
When a driver takes a picture for validation, the specific features of the driver is extracted from the image, which is then matched to the image available in the records. All this happens in real-time at in the IT backhaul.
