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Apple working on faces recognition

Teaser
A new Patent from Apple published, suggesting a facial recognition feature

Looking at the history, we know Apple has a record of taking products that work but not released immediately. Rather they redesign them with an appeal which can make the products popular among the public and ultimately helping them with their sales. And if we indicate such products it will include iPad and Siri.

Now they have come up with a new patent that suggests Apple is now going to come up with some facial recognition application. The US Patent and Trademark Office on December 29 has published a patent application, which describes a system for presence detection that builds on two patents Apple had already filed related to technology. But it seems that this one has a specific take aimed at use in mobile devices.

The prior patents mainly dealt with the presence detection on MacBooks and with advanced recognition systems for use in processor- heavy home and business applications. But this one mostly combines sophistication with a light footprint for practical, everyday mobile use. This patent describes a system in which lightning conditions, angles, and even scale could all to be accounted for. This will make facial recognition usable on mobiles without strict caveats and conditions.

The face recognition system provided with Samsung Galaxy Nexus which is powered by Ice Cream Sandwich is a nice one but it has also some drawbacks. It can be fooled by a still photograph of the person who has activated the recognition feature.

The new feature on the Apple is expected to accurately determine who is using the device without requiring a heavy computational cost as involved in such processes. It will be ignoring the facial biometrics and assessing the position of personal features to compensate for changes in subjects orientation.

One more advantageous feature is to be included which would evaluate the user’s level of attention while using the system. This will help the system being used with the help of a still photograph. The new patent also suggests that the new feature will be capable to recognize faces among the family members, friends and also co-workers, then delivering different screen savers or non-secured information to those individuals. 

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Pallab Jyotee Hazarika, 2012-01- 3 (Update: 2012-05-26)