Wicket is proud to announce the results from our recent submission to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Facial Recognition Vendor Test (FRVT), the gold standard for the evaluation of accuracy and performance of algorithms and products such as ours.
We’ve spent the last few years forging our path as a pioneer in facial authentication software – being the first U.S. based company to deploy a facial ticketing solution at a professional sports league venue in the Fall of 2020. Since then we’ve expanded to customers in the NFL, MLB, and MLS, and have plans to scale our offering to customers beyond sports and entertainment.
In February of 2022, Wicket joined a list of over 400 algorithms submitted to FRVT 1:1 by numerous companies from across the world. Taking into account this was our first submission (most others have submitted multiple times), we were confident and expected (our algorithm(s)) to perform well based on years of real-world experience and learnings. Unsurprisingly, We were happy to see the results when they were posted publicly on NIST’s website. Below are some takeaways from our ranking (at the date of submission):
- #3 ranking for U.S. based algorithms in the VISA Border test
- #10 globally in the Visa Border test
- Top 25 globally in 4 out of 5 constrained false non-match rate (FNMR) tests, good enough to put us in the top 6% of all algorithms submitted.
- 99.76% accuracy rate in Visa Border test (just 0.0010 behind the leading algorithm)
So what does all this mean? It means we stand toe to toe with some of the biggest names in facial recognition across the globe and that we stand at the forefront of companies in the United States as it relates to accuracy.
The Visa Border category and the images within that testing dataset closely align with Wicket’s primary use case for facial access control and ticketing, and therefore is the best benchmark for us to compare against.
Wicket’s algorithm was also part of the first cohort of submissions using NIST’s new API and evaluation operating system. In a separate test using the old standard, Wicket finished #5 globally – and #1 in the United States in the Visa Border Non-Masked category.
These results are a testament to our team’s dedication to being a best-in-class facial authentication offering. We look forward to continuing our work to bring this highly accurate technology to mainstream use through our customers and partners.