Book excerpt: The development of technologies for the identi?cation of individuals has driven the interest and curiosity of many people. Spearheaded and inspired by the Bertillon coding system for the classi?cation of humans based on physical measurements, scientists and engineers have been trying to invent new devices and classi?cation systems to capture the human identity from its body measurements. One of the main limitations of the precursors of today’s biometrics, which is still present in the vast majority of the existing biometric systems, has been the need to keep the device in close contact with the subject to capture the biometric measurements. This clearly limits the applicability and convenience of biometric systems. This book presents an important step in addressing this limitation by describing a number of methodologies to capture meaningful biometric information from a distance. Most materials covered in this book have been presented at the International Summer School on Biometrics which is held every year in Alghero, Italy and which has become a ?agship activity of the IAPR Technical Committee on Biometrics (IAPR TC4). The last four chapters of the book are derived from some of the best p- sentations by the participating students of the school. The educational value of this book is also highlighted by the number of proposed exercises and questions which will help the reader to better understand the proposed topics.