Face recognition used to be considered science fiction – the expensive, not-so-accurate domain of a small priestcraft of researchers and techies. Now, we have the technology to put biometrics in the pocket of every cop and soldier, providing them with the tools to match “faces in the wild” against massive image databases with the touch of a button.

For an informative overview of where biometrics has been and where it’s going, check out Animetrics CEO Paul Schuepp’s TEDx talk, “Will Identity Resolution Keep Us All Safe?” The lecture was recorded during CO-Innovation, Innovation through Collaboration, an event organized by TEDxAmoskeagMillyard at the University of New Hampshire last fall.

At TEDx, Schuepp briefly delved into the science behind Animetrics facial recognition products, the “computational anatomy” invented by founder Dr. Michael Miller that allows images to be rotated, “pose corrected” and converted from 2D to 3D. Schuepp also explored the growing use case for facial recognition, explaining how law enforcement, the military, security professionals and officials with departments of motor vehicles – among many others – currently use biometrics in a wide variety of applications.

From matching suspected terrorists to international watch lists to helping crime victims identify attackers, aiding police in criminal investigations to identifying duplicate driver’s licenses, facial recognition technology is quickly becoming more widely accessible and applicable. And hand-held devices linked to limitless cloud-based databases are giving investigators and military users more mobility and speedier access than ever before.

As Schuepp explains, face recognition has come a long way in the past ten years. Now, he says, when it comes to ensuring safety and security, biometrics are the most important weapon of all.