These days, technology plays a big role in both social media and our daily lives. Whether it's television, digital signage, household technology or specialised communication, technology has become a necessity. One of such technologies is facial recognition.
From when it was made to up till now, advancements in biometric technology and artificial intelligence have led the world to become more secure, convenient and accessible. Face recognition has especially proven to be useful in both normal and challenging times. Digital signage solutions Dubai has made significant advancements when it comes to face recognition and biometric technology. Especially during the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, face and iris recognition has proven to become more popular for multiple businesses and law enforcement institutes.
To understand the technology of face recognition better, a proper timeline review is necessary. And to make things interesting, we can explore the key milestones and technological advancement that has led to the modern personification of facial recognition. But before we discuss it, it is important to first understand what face recognition is and how it works.
What Is Face Recognition And How It Works?
Face recognition is a biometric technology that is capable of identifying a person through a video, image or an audio-visual product of their face. It is a method that uses different aspects of the body, measures it – from face to head – and collects a set of information associated with a person’s face and expressions. This can be done to identify, authenticate or verify a person.
Facial recognition works in a very unique way. The procedure, which happens in a matter of seconds, requires digital photographic software to generate image data. This is necessary for creating and recording the biometric face pattern of an individual. The system first captures an incoming image or face in a two or three-dimensional way. Then, the system analyses the facial features mathematically without a margin of error. The machine then verifies if the biometric data matches the facial features of the person who used the service or device. In the case of law enforcement, the system verifies if the facial features match with those from the image provided.
With the help of the advanced machine learning technologies and artificial intelligence (AI), face recognition systems can operate with reliability and safety based on the highest standards. The process can also be done in real-time, thanks to the multiple computing methods and algorithms.
How Did Face Recognition Come To Surface?
Facial recognition was a popular technology, even before it comes under the limelight of mainstream media. In fact, it has a long history that dates back to the 1800s. It was initially made to track down law offenders and criminals. Especially since criminals such as the infamous bandits Billy the Kid and Jesse Woodson James were difficult to track down using “Wanted Dead or Alive” posters.
Since advertisements offering huge bounties were not useful at many times. Mainly because the facial description or description would sometimes be either false or not worth using. Movies like James Bond have shown how disguises can easily fool the public eye. Thus, face recognition was created. After that it became easier for the police officers to locate and apprehend suspects and criminals.
In the 1960s Woodrow Wilson Bledsoe (Woody) developed a workable way to distinguish faces using the help of gridlines. This helped to start the era of computerized facial recognition. However, Bledsoe’s recognition programme still needed a large amount of human assistance. There would be a team of people who handled the extraction of the coordinates from a person’s photograph. This was done to mark the facial co-ordinates and enter these mathematical numbers into a computer for further processing. With this technology, the team was able to match about 40 faces within an hour, as each face took roughly 90 seconds to be processed and matched. At that time, this technique was considered very impressive.
By the end of the 1960s, face recognition further developed at the Stanford Research Institute. The institute confirmed that this technology will become more useful in identifying humans, than humans themselves. The reason is because most people cannot recognise individuals that they have not talked to or known.
By the end of the 19th century, the University of Bochum in Germany came up with a solution that further enhanced face recognition. This led to facial biometric technology to be so famous that airport customs and banks bought it. And from that moment onwards, the facial recognition market started to successfully bloom.
The primary aim for facial technology was to achieve accurate and successful recognition of individuals on hardware that is commonly available. Such as CCTV surveillance and standard computing devices.
When hearing about the past, most people are surprised. However, this timeline created plentiful milestones for different developers to make face recognition what it is today. When created in the start, it was not very useful, and was not as effective until after the 2000s. Some of the early investors included event managers, banks, law enforcement institutes and forensic investigators. It is mainly due to the consistent failure and revisions that it became so useful today.
Most people back then hoped this technology would go beyond its initial experimentations. Thus, with all the milestones, it further improved and survived in the market.
Where Is Face Recognition Now?
Fast-forward to the current days, facial recognition has become a popular and familiar technology. It has been so normalised that it is used in smartphones for unlocking devices, applications and even taking pictures. Most applications also offer fun and serious advantages in smartphones, such as MasterCard Identity Check and iPhone X Face ID. Apart from that, it is used on millions of people who go through passport e-gates, access control channels and other security points, including making payments. These days, facial recognition has become a quick solution for a lot of daily requirements. While it is still used in law enforcement and banks, it is used in a lot of other places as well.
Perhaps the biggest difference is that in the past, a team of people needed to work every day to identify at least a 1000 faces. Today, only one person is needed to match his or someone else’s face with just a small device in-hand. This is used to compare a person’s identity either on the application, image or passport. Now, the hardware that requires a large computer to run, can be used by a small pocket-sized device at any time and anywhere in the world.
Not only does facial recognition enable more safety and security for the world, but also helps individuals to have fun while at it. While it is still more challenging to offer 100% accurate and successful recognition on commonly available devices, this technology today is much more accurate and acceptable. This is as compared to identifying a face in every 90 seconds. Now, matches can be done in a few seconds.
Conclusion
Every technology needs a specific timeline of failure and amendments to become a fool-proof device. Same is the case for face recognition. Needless to say, many failures and errors led to the latest advancement and evolution of face recognition. From body worn cameras for recognition in real-time for police officers to direct verification of a person.
The good part about this evolution is that every arrest, search or even interaction will be supported by a real-time face recognition software at hand. Due to this, there will be no mistakes in arresting individuals or wider groups of people. Police officers, security channels and law enforcement will no longer have to rely on memory alone for identifying individuals.
At the end of the day, as the accuracy of this technology continues to evolve, complex and challenging environments will become easier to tackle. One thing to keep in mind is that while it can be extremely useful, it should only be used for the right purposes to offer safety and security.
Count Miler is a content creator and a writer. He is having the good experience previously in other technology companies, recently he is working for Digital Signage. He loves to explore new information about newly trending technologies.
