Face ID, a new way to secure your stuff

Overview:

      These days we see a lot of ads by smart phone manufacturing companies on using Face ID to unlock your devices; apparently apple launched an entirely new iphone just to incorporate face unlock! Furthermore we have also seen facial recognition scanners in many Hollywood movies wherein a laser, scans the face. Laser scanning may be futuristic; but thanks to Computer Vision (CV) technology we are now able to recognize faces and use them as a key. In this post I'll be writing about facial recognition, its associated tech, and its applications.

 How does face ID work??..

      Face ID at its core implements facial recognition system; it is a technology capable of identifying a person from a digital image/video or a live camera (in case of face ID and filters) by comparing the live image with an image stored in the archives. Initially facial recognition systems were employed in security measures as a way to track criminals, vehicles defying traffic laws and as one of the bio-metric scanners at government facilities. 

     Facial recognition works on various techniques; lets look in to them one by one.

• Traditional algorithmic facial recognition: Recognition algorithms can be divided into two main approaches: geometric, which looks at distinguishing features, and photo-metric, which is a statistical approach that distills an image into values and compares the values with templates to eliminate variances. Some face recognition algorithms identify facial features by extracting landmarks, or features, from an image of the subject's face. For example, an algorithm may analyze the relative position, size, and/or shape of the eyes, nose, cheekbones, and jaw. These features are then used to search for other images with matching features.
•  3D recognition: Three-dimensional face recognition technique uses 3D sensors to capture information about the shape of a face. This information is then used to identify distinctive features on the surface of a face, such as the contour of the eye sockets, nose, and chin. One advantage of 3D face recognition is that it is not affected by changes in lighting like other techniques. In addition to that, it can also identify a face from a range of viewing angles, including a profile view
• Skin texture analysis: Another emerging trend uses the visual details of the skin, as captured in standard digital or scanned images. This technique, called Skin Texture Analysis, turns the unique lines, patterns, and spots apparent in a person’s skin into a mathematical space. Skin Texture Analysis, works much in the same way as facial recognition does. A picture of a patch of skin is taken; it is called a skin-print. That patch is then broken up into smaller blocks. Using algorithms to turn the patch into a mathematical, measurable space, the system will then distinguish any lines, pores and the actual skin texture. It can identify differences between identical twins, which is not yet possible using facial recognition software alone.
• Facial recognition combining different techniques: As every methods has its advantages and disadvantages, technology companies have amalgamated the traditional, 3D recognition and Skin Textual Analysis, to create recognition systems that have higher rates of success. Combined technique recognition has an advantage over other systems. It is relatively insensitive to changes in expression, including blinking, frowning or smiling and has the ability to compensate for mustache or beard growth and the appearance of eyeglasses. The system is also uniform with respect to race and gender.

Applications of facial recognition systems

• Mobile security: As mentioned earlier in the blog, the Face ID unlock is gaining popularity among the smart phones these days. All you need to do is set up your reference face for the algorithms to compare with and then you unlock the phone without any hassle. 
• Social medias: This is a blooming field were the facial recognition has been implemented for entertainment purposes. You can now add filters like: animoji, goggles, hats, spit fire out of mouth and what not! all of this is possible with the help of facial recognition and computer vision.
• National security: Facial recognition can be utilized to track all and any sort of criminals by the Govt. in order to maintain peace and order. Furthermore, it can also be implemented at borders of a country to make sure illegal immigrants are restricted.
• Solve issues related to safety: In a country as humongous as India, it is almost impossible to keep an eye on every single road/junction. By implementing facial recognition cameras, every street can be monitored and pin point preciously the person responsible for a crime if any.

Advantages of a facial recognition system:

      One key advantage of facial recognition is that it can be used to pin point any person even if the situation is similar to finding a needle in the hay stack. But on the other hand, the system has the highest rate of rejection compared to other bio-metric systems and becomes inefficient in certain conditions.

Weakness of the facial recognition:

     Primary weakness is that commercial facial recognition software is that, it is incapable of recognition under low light conditions (these facilities are available only on high end recognition systems employed by the military). 

     Furthermore, it requires a huge amount of data on persons' facial characteristics to be collected in order for recognition to be precise. If the key characteristics are missing in the database then the facial recognition is bound to fail.