Mar 14
Cars that can recognize when drivers are angry or irritated, and warn when emotional states might make them dangerous on the road, are in development in France, using dashboard cameras … Continue reading
Feb 10
Google Glass is starting to see experiments in how it can be uses outside of the usual navigation purposes, which is good for such a niche device. However, some of … Continue reading
Jan 15
Computers that can identify objects without requiring any human training are now a possibility, as researchers figure out how to teach AIs to intuit the key features and differences between … Continue reading
Jan 09
Anybody can clip on a camera and call it a life-logger, but startup LifeLogger says its wearable goes the extra mile with its combination of face, text, and even audio … Continue reading
Dec 07
Technology start-up Knightscope last week debuted a prototype security robot that looks a lot like a Dalek (of Doctor Who infamy.) The K5 Autonomous Data Machine stands five feet high, rolls around on wheels, can sense a variety of potential security threats through an array of sensors, and can instantly notify the police in the […]
Dec 03
Apple Patents Face Recognition Tech For Enhanced iPhone Privacy And Automated Controls
Posted in: Today's Chili
Apple has been issued a patent by the USPO today (via AppleInsider) that describes a system for using facial recognition and detection on a mobile or desktop computing device. This could work a lot like the Android face unlock option, which has been criticized before for its fallibility, but is also designed to prompt activity and use facial expressions as input for controlling the device.
This could be used to not only protect data on an iPhone in a locked state, but also determine how much information is shared on the lock screen for a user. So if a person is receiving a call and their iPhone recognizes them (determined by a number of factors, including skin tone, vectors, feature distance and size, etc.) then it’ll display caller ID and information from the user’s contacts app. If it’s not someone the phone has listed as a user of the device, it’ll block all that data.
Likewise with emails or messages, it could scrub the content of any actual info until there’s a positive recognition match for a phone’s rightful user. In a desktop computing context, the recognition could be used to analyze a user’s behavior over time as they sit in front of their Mac, determining when to trigger certain actions like screen savers, or enter a movie mode, or switch audio devices to prepare for a Skype call, for instance.
Apple has just acquired PrimeSense, the Israeli firm that helped created the original Microsoft Kinect’s motion sensing capabilities, so it’s tempting to link the two, even though the Apple patent far pre-dates that subsequent deal. Still, Apple has shown that it places a premium on innovation that helps users access their device more securely and more conveniently with the introduction of the iPhone 5s fingerprint sensor, and this could provide a way to allow users more access to things like Siri from the lockscreen, without the privacy compromises that come along with some of the assistant’s more useful convenience features.
Jun 27
The FBI has been sued by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) for access to its biometrics database, arguing that the US agency has failed to comply with Freedom of Information Act requests and is gathering face-recognition data, among other things, with no external governance. The lawsuit, which follows grudging FBI confirmation that it is deploying
Jun 20
Glasses that prevent the wearer from being recognized by face detection software have been demonstrated in Japan, using LED light invisible to the human eye but confusing to monitoring cameras to mask identity. The privacy visor, under development by Isao Echizen‘s team at the Japanese National Institute of Informatics, works by packing a pair of
May 25
Google’s Glass wearable could soon be able to recognize faces of those around the wearer, thanks to a dedicated service for human and object recognition that could be built into third-party apps. The handiwork of Lambda Labs, the special Glass facial recognition API will integrate into software and services using Google’s Mirror API for Glass, crunching shots from the camera and spitting out the identity of people and objects it recognizes. Lambda Labs expects the system to be used for real-world social networking and person-location services, though also warns that it could eventually fall foul of impending privacy regulation.
Lambda’s service has been in operation – though not in Glass-specific form – for some time, and is already used by around 1,000 developers, according to the company. It works by using a pre-existing “album” of known faces or objects, for instance your work colleagues, against which new captures from the camera are compared.
What the system can’t do, right now at least, is compare those around you to images not in its own album. So, you couldn’t walk into a room and have Glass flag up those you might be friends with on Google+ based on the publicly-uploaded photos they’ve shared. It’s also not a real-time process: images have to be passed over to Lambda’s engine via the Mirror API, and the results then fed back in the opposite way.
That’s going to involve a delay of around a few seconds, the company told TechCrunch. It’s a similar system to what we saw MedRef for Glass, an app intending to make calling up patient records more straightforward for doctors and hospital staff, use, and indeed Lambda Labs’ API could be integrated server-side for future versions of MedRef or apps like it.
Despite the fact that, even with functionality like this, Glass wearers won’t be able to roam the streets having names and personal details of those around them hovering in the air like SIMS icons, the facial identification system leads Google’s headset into even murkier privacy issues. Earlier this month, a concerned US Congressional committee fired off a list of privacy-related questions to Google CEO Larry Page, demanding reassurance by June 14 that the wearable wouldn’t collect personal data without the consent of non-users, wouldn’t be unduly intrusive in ways smartphones are not currently, and how it might be updated and its functionality extended in future.
Currently, Glass lacks native face-recognition, hence the opening for third-party services like Lambda Labs’ to step in. Google’s own stance has been that it would require “strong privacy protections” be in place before it would consider adding the functionality itself; exactly what protections would be considered sufficiently “safe” for the public is unclear.
Members of Google’s Glass team touched on the potential for privacy infringement during the fireside chat about the wearable at Google I/O earlier this month. Among the factors built in to avoid any misuse of the camera is an SDK-level requirement that the camera be active if the headset is recording, Glass engineer Charles Mendis revealed; there’s also, product director Steve Lee pointed out, “a clear social gesture” involved in triggering that recording, whether it be physically pressing the button on the upper side of the eyepiece, or giving the “OK Glass, take a photo” spoken command.
Nonetheless, it’s a young segment of the industry and the rules are likely to be fluid as the “what we could do” urge for progress bumps up against “what we should do” restraint. Parallel developments in Google+ are leading Glass down the life-logging path, giving room – and the organizational tools – to store every moment that goes on around you, even if the hardware and software aren’t quite set up that way today.
Google Glass facial-recognition service likely to stoke privacy fears is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
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Mar 15
I always thought the movie Face-Off was completely implausible, but science has proven that face transplants are actually possible – assuming that the donor is no longer living. While you probably never want to go through such a horrendous trauma, you can now swap faces – digitally – using an iOS app.
Yahoo! Japan’s FaceStealer app lets you load up images of other people, animals or cartoon characters, and then map them over your face. The process is pretty straightforward, and just requires that you line up a few key facial features to make it work. Once the mapping is attached, the front-facing camera on your phone will capture your movements and combine them with your newly transplanted visage.
Check it out in action below:
Ok, on second thought, maybe I don’t want to try that if I ever hope to get a good night’s sleep again. That is some seriously weird stuff there. It’s cool, but completely freaky.
If you’d like to try it out, you can grab FaceStealer over in the iTunes App Store for free now.
[via DigInfo.TV]
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