IoT-Based Smart Attendance and Access Control System Using RFID and Face Verification: A Review

Abstract

Attendance management and access control are important requirements in educational institutions, offices, laboratories, and other restricted areas. Traditional attendance systems mainly depend on manual records, while RFID-based systems provide faster identification but cannot always confirm whether the person using the RFID card is the actual registered user. This can result in problems such as proxy attendance and unauthorized access. The integration of Internet of Things (IoT), Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), and face verification provides an opportunity to develop a more secure and automated solution. RFID can be used to identify a registered user, while face verification provides an additional check of the user's identity. In the proposed system, an RFID reader is connected with an ESP32 controller and an ESP32-CAM is used to capture the user's face. Attendance is recorded and access is provided only when the RFID information and face identity are successfully matched. The system also uses IoT connectivity to store attendance information digitally and support remote monitoring. An electronic lock controlled through a relay can be used to manage access to a restricted area. This review discusses recent developments in RFID-based attendance systems, face-recognition-based attendance systems, IoT-enabled monitoring, and combined authentication approaches. It also identifies the research gap in integrating attendance management, face verification, electronic access control, and IoT monitoring into a single low-cost system. The proposed approach aims to improve attendance reliability, reduce manual work, decrease the possibility of proxy attendance, and provide better control over restricted access.