Many people hear that a facility like an airport is using facial recognition technology, and they simply assume that the cameras they see in these places are actually the face scanners. But there is no real piece of hardware that serves as a scanning mechanism for a face.
The ability to scan a face is in the software of the facial recognition system. The cameras that are connected to the facial recognition software are just high-definition still or video cameras. The face scanner that people imagine is often illustrated as a series of connected dots laid-over a subject’s face. This is a fairly accurate, illustrated description of how facial recognition app or software actually works.
History of Facial Recognition
Americans, Woody Bledsoe, Helen Chan Wolf and Charles Bisson were the people who initially worked on using a computer to recognize a human face. They were funded by an anonymous US intelligence agency back in the early to middle 60s.
They established the basic premise of the algorithm used in facial recognition. This is the connected dots that are used in illustrations. They assumed that there were minute differences in all the measurements of the face they between individuals that resulted in nobody looking exactly the same.
By measuring these differences and comparing them against a database of known measurements, theoretically, they would be able to identify an individual by these measurements. The algorithm that performed the comparisons between these measurements was actually the face scanner that people imagined cameras to be.
Vast Improvements to the TechnologyÂ
As the initial technology benefitted from other technologies that could be used in conjunction with facial recognition, the technology slowly improved.
One of the main initial problems with facial recognition was that people rarely held their heads at the exact same angle when photographed for comparison purposes. Add to this problem the differences in length of shadows from different light sources, and you’ll have some idea of the problems the researchers were up against.
But with the introduction of 3-dimensional face recognition, thermal imaging cameras, and skin texture analysis as added tools in standardizing angles, equalizing lighting, or identifying features, facial recognition finally overcame a lot of the obstacles it faced.
As these new tools became commonplace and readily available to the public, the development of facial recognition software expanded to include thousands of researchers. Facial recognition software became a useful product to have for several applications in corporate human resources, retail marketing, and national and private security.
Today, the face scanners that people once thought looked like cameras are responsible for cutting down on pilferage from businesses. They’re also welcoming valued customers in retail establishments, and increasing overall safety when out in crowded public spaces.
The technology continues to improve. These improvements are somewhat equally divided between advances in the algorithm and developments in the camera systems used to deliver the facial images to the algorithm.
The story of facial technology is an excellent example of using new, emerging technologies to overcome the problems of an older, but still promising technology.
