Ten students from Xi'an Jiaotong University in Shaanxi Province won third prize at the Eighth Finance and Information Technology Application Contest held in Wuhan, Hubei Province, on October 26 for their ATM security system, Chinese Business reported earlier this month.

The prize-winning system is designed to send a warning to the host bank when an ATM user is wearing a mask or dark glasses in order to cut down on thefts.

Gong Chen, a senior studying software at Xi'an Jiaotong University who acted as group leader, said the team's members come from different fields, including software, management, economics and finance.

"We joined together to participate in the Finance and Information Technology Application Contest," Gong was quoted by the newspaper as saying. "We decided to do our project on ATM security because we all agreed it was creative."

During the research phase, the team discovered that most ATM thieves wore hats, masks or sunglasses to obscure their faces. While the current monitoring system records every transaction, it is hard for a bank to catch a thief in real time.  Gong's team developed a security system that notifies the bank whenever an individual whose face is unreasonably obscured tries to use an ATM.

"We combined face recognition technology and long-range image transmission technology together," Gong said. "Everyone worked very hard."

Gong said that the system still has some kinks to work out before it can be installed in ATMs, and that some finance software companies have already expressed their interest in the technology, according to the newspaper.

Global Times