West Virginia University will send researchers to the annual Twins Days festival in Twinsburg Ohio to conduct biometric facial and voice research on sets of identical and fraternal twins, with a focus on identification and accessibility solutions.

According to a report in the Twinsburg Bulletin, fraternal and identical twins will be studied – having pictures taken and voices recorded for analysis.

According to WVU professor Jeremy Dawson —quoted in the Twinsburg article— twins pose an interesting problem with facial features.

In response, Dawson plans to use a 3D facial recognition system for his research, but will also be working with other modalities, including voice recognition.

At the Twins Day event, Dawson and his team will also record audio from short interviews and prepared passages from participating siblings at the event.

“This is invaluable to the biometrics field,” Dawson said. “Twins Days gives us an opportunity to collect a hugely diverse amount of data in a very short period of time.”