On Tuesday, 28 March Uber held a driver-partner workshop at their the Cape Town Greenlight Hub, a partner centre that provides drivers with established channels of communication to raise individual questions and concerns that they may have.
This workshop provided Cape Town driver-partners with an opportunity to see how the technology works and ask any questions.
The technology works by prompting driver-partners to share a selfie before going online. Uber then compares this image to the photograph already on file with the account. This is achieved through advanced facial recognition technology.
The system first identifies a face, then it builds a feature set by focusing on key features, and finally compares the feature set to the validated image Uber has on file.
This all takes place within a few seconds. If the two images don’t match, the account is temporarily blocked while Uber looks into the situation. This helps Uber to ensure that the driver-partner using the app matches the account it has on file.
Real-time ID Check is able to assure riders that when they are picked up, the right person is behind the wheel. It also protects driver-partners from fraud, theft and risks to their account being compromised. Only the registered driver-partner can use and earn a profit from the app.
The innovation behind Real-Time ID started with experimentation with voice, facial and gesture recognition. Each technology was tested within the widely diverge environments in which Uber operates.
The quality of voice recognition decreased in noisy, high-traffic environments and was impractical for hearing and speech-impaired driver-partners. Gesture recognition tested well, but presented a steep learning curve as many are not used to this technology. However, the simple action of taking a selfie is a language that people all over the world understand.
General manager for Uber Sub-Saharan Africa, Alon Lits, says, “It is important to us that this extra security feature does not inconvenience driver-partners. For this reason, we focused on making the user experience as simple as possible from the beginning of the project by testing it on driver-partners around the world to ensure it is a simple, effective and quick experience.”
While visual recognition has existed for a while, this is the first time it has been applied on such a scale to enhance security for both Uber driver-partners and riders.
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