Plans to implement 3-D facial recognition technology to secure high-risk areas in the UK received a much-needed shot in the arm from the UK government recently.

Innovate UK has allocated joint funding of £170,000 for the two-year project by the University of the West of England (UWE Bristol) and leading British facial recognition company Customer Clever to develop a ground-breaking solution for high security commercial use in the UK and around the globe.  Customer Clever has pioneered face recognition solution for customers in a range of sectors, including retail.

The project will be supervised by experts from UWE Bristol's Centre for Machine Vision, which has been developing 3-D facial recognition systems in its laboratories for more than 10 years. Lyndon Smith, professor of Computer Simulation and Machine Vision at the Centre for Machine Vision, part of the Bristol Robotics Laboratory, said facial recognition technology can allow retail store or restaurant chain owners to ban entry of unwanted customers.  With 3-D, railway stations can also check for anyone who has not bought a ticket, and enable a live sporting venue to allow access to its registered VIPs.

 The potential uses are many for 3-D but Smith said they have to iron out problems with how the technology performs.What the human eye can easily detect like changes in background light and people looking in different directions would pose a problem for 3-D technology. "There's a difference between making the system work in the laboratory and doing so in a busy supermarket," he noted.

 Professor Smith said high-resolution 3-D technology is superior compared to the existing 2-D face recognition systems used for airport security.  He recommends the 3-D solution for national or high security, border control and locations where access control is paramount, as it provides an extra layer of confidence not available in many of the 2-D solutions.  

Smith said their 3-D solution provides pinpoint accuracy mapping your face down to skin texture levels. "Our system produces what is effectively a fingerprint of the face -- showing up fine detail and blemishes such as scars or wrinkles.The solution is also quicker, more effective and more discreet than fingerprint or iris recognition."

Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bringing_Hand_Gesture_Control_to_Ultrabooks.jpg Author: Intel Free Press