Pireco Co., Ltd., a student-led venture company, founded by a group of UNIST students develops biometrics-based recognition solution for pet animals, which classifies and registers pet animals based on their unique biometric traits, such as iris and nose prints.
The startup announced that it has recently embarked on Chuncheon City’s pilot project to demonstrate its new pet registration system that uses facial recognition to identify individual cats and dogs. It plans to demonstrate its service to about 500 dogs in Chuncheon City, by August 2022.
Several other companies and organizations will also partake in this demonstration project, which includes the Korea Internet and Security Agency (KISA), the Gangwon Information Protection Support Center, and the Korea association for Biometric IDentity security (KBID). During the project, they plan on establishing database based on nose prints and facial expression, performance testing tools for new solutions, as well as search tools to locate missing cats and dogs based on those.
Opening ceremony of Chunchoen City’s biometrics-based pet registration pilot project. | Image Credit: Pireco Co., Ltd.
“This project is a major new milestone and a real honor for us,” says Tae-Heon Kim, the CEO of Pireco. “This clearly shows that our work has earned people’s recognition, as having the best technique in the biometric field.”
Pireco is a pet tech startup, founded in September 2018 by CEO Tae-Heon Kim, while researching human iris recognition technology during his graduate school years. The startup has developed a multi-biometric recognition solution to identify individual pets.
It has been recognized for its technological capabilities, as it was selected for the Digital New Deal project, the Daedeok R&D Special Zone project, the Tech Incubation Program for Startup (TIPS), as well as the IP R&D Project by the Korea Intellectual Property Strategy Agency. In addition, work is underway to standardize biometric technology at home and abroad. Pireco is taking the lead in developing international standards as it has recently proposed and approved of a new standard project for development at the meeting of ITU-T Study Group 17 (SG17), hosted by the ITU-T (International Telecommunication Union – Telecommunication Standardization Sector) in April 2020.
The push for the Chuncheon City’s pilot project was attributed to receiving excellent evaluation at the ‘Challenge, Korea!’ contest, hosted by the Ministry of Public Administration and Security in second half of 2020. Pireco received the highest evaluation and won a ministerial commendation at the contest, namely ‘Activating Pet Registration, Preventing Pets from Being Lost or Abandoned.”
