This deal comes hot on the heels of another co-operation agreement (announced in last month's BTT) which saw the integrator team up with iris recognition company IriTech.

In May 2007, Lockheed opened its Biometric Experimentation and Advanced Concepts (BEACON) facility in White Hall to serve as a collaborative centre to develop integrated biometrics solutions. Through this agreement the company, which reported sales of US$39.6 billion in 2006, hopes to further advance its capabilities and offerings in biometrics solutions.

According to Bob Eastman, Lockheed Martin Vice President, Information Systems, “Biometrics is an increasingly important technology area for our customers in intelligence, defense, law enforcement and homeland security. This cooperation agreement will improve our ability to offer our customers a complete and fully-integrated portfolio of biometrics technologies. We're also committed to helping small, innovative businesses such as Cognitec continue to advance the state-of-the-art in biometrics technology in an open and collaborative marketplace.”

Cognitec Systems is the developer of FaceVACS. The facial recognition technology has been in development since 1995 and has been tested and proven in a number of independent evaluations, including the Face Recognition Vendor Tests in 2002 and 2006.

Alfredo Herrera, Cognitec Systems CEO, noted: “We are excited about this cooperation with Lockheed Martin, which reinforces our commitment to provide leading-edge facial recognition technology to our customers. We look forward to working with Lockheed Martin to integrate and deploy our technology in a variety of important biometrics projects.”

Contact: Matt Kramer at Lockheed Martin, Tel: +1 703 293 4333; Email: matthew.s.kramer@lmco.com