facerecognition
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Your face is your password with Bioscrypt's VisionAccess 3D DeskCam
Being touted in what sounds like patent-speak as the "world's first 3D face recognition camera for use in authenticating individuals accessing a computer," security firm Bioscrypt Inc's upcoming VisionAccess 3D DeskCam promises to enable sub-second logins to applications, networks, and websites with just a quick glance at your ugly mug. The webcam-looking device (which we assume can also be used as an, um, webcam) looks for 40,000 identification points to verify authenticity, and is said to be capable of not just accounting for facial hair (or the lack thereof), but actually distinguishing between identical twins. That nose job you're planning, however, will require you to re-register. While the system -- which is scheduled to ship in the second half of the year -- sounds fairly promising and convenient, for safety's sake we'll be sticking with our trusty fingerprint scanners; after all, we still have seven fingers left, but only one head. [Via DailyTech]
Beauty-rating software could spell trouble for Hot or Not
Facial recognition software has been used in a smorgasbord of positive applications, aiding our soldiers in detecting baddies, keeping weirdos out of clubs, barring maniacs from entering football arenas, and even helping parents know when their infant is truly in a bad way, but the latest usage of the technology could indeed hurt the feelings of the less-than-attractive. A pair of controversy-lovin' Australian scientists have devised a software program that actually rates one's face "from one to ten" in terms of most ugly to most beautiful, and uses a sophisticated database of facial proportions borrowed from some 200 stunning women across the globe in order to give you a very honest answer when questioning your attractivity. Of course, we all know that real beauty lies within (right?), and if your idea of sexy doesn't match up with the generally accepted supermodel "look," the results could indeed conflict with your own beliefs. Currently, the program is designed to work solely with women, but adopting a male iteration could definitely be in the cards, and while we doubt this stuff would be particularly beneficial for your image-obsessed teen, it's primarily intended for use in the cosmetic surgery realm to judge just how effective that ridiculously expensive nose job really was.[Via Digg]
RFID staples, omnipotent pens to grace offices of the future?
We already know just how snazzy your office's bizhub will be in a decade or so, and we think we've even got your desk and kitchen nailed down too, but a recent brainstorming in Popular Science brushed a few less sensational, albeit quite intriguing, office mainstays for 2017. Although we've got a few years yet before we can definitively say whether or not these folks will pull a psychic-AT&T on us, but if Swingline has its way, the traditional red stapler that continually jams and collects more dust than it does anything else will be quite controversial. Sure to enrage pro-privacy employees who've already been unknowingly chipped with an RFID tag upon agreement to come on board, the staples of the future could actually contain micro-RFID tags; these chips could then be traced to find out just how long it really sits in one's "to do" stack, or if "inexplicably missing" really means "intentionally destroyed." As cruel as we know that sounds, at least you can pen all the curses you wish on even the most ink-resistant material in your manager's suite, as the future-generation Staedtler pen is being designed to "write on almost anything by optimizing molecular bonds with a surface" in order to produce the right mixtures needed to adhere to a given medium. Of course, the transparent monitors that will come with your 2015 upgrade kit will effectively kill your ability to surf Engadget while being guarded by the plastic backing of your current LCD, but the face recognizing desk locks should at least keep Gary from snagging your chocolate when you're out on break. Click on through for a few more mockups of tomorrow's office gizmos.
IWARD nursebot looks to clean hospitals, fend off intruders
We all know security gets a little heavy eyed when the wee hours of the morning roll around, and we highly doubt the janitorial staff is humming along at maximum efficiency when the residents are snoozing away, so implementing a robot to tackle both tasks seems quite practical. The IWARD project hopes to develop a "nursebot" that wears several hats, and can handle cleaning up spills, utilizing face and voice recognition technology to "communicate with patients and spot unauthorized visitors," and even working in "swarms" to distribute tasks between the robotic crew. Researchers are aiming to have a three bot prototype ready to rock by 2010, and want to integrate sensors and camera to avoid collisions whilst "traveling along high-speed lanes in the hospital corridors." Better steer grandma's wheelchair clear of the robotic raceway, eh?[Via TechieDiva]
Samsung's 7.2-megapixel VLUU i70 brings HSDPA / texting
Yeah, it'd be nice if every swank HSDPA-equipped cameraphone that you felt comfortable texting on boasted a 7.2-megapixel CCD sensor, 3x optical zoom, and a three-inch LCD monitor to hold down the photography end of the spectrum, but unless you happened to throw down for Samsung's own SCH-B600 and get the bulk of those niceties, you're currently out of luck. Enter the VLUU i70, which is designed to presumably tackle the niche market of folks who'd rather communicate via text than spoken word and simply have image quality as a slightly higher priority than cellphone capability. The device sports the aforementioned features and also touts up to ISO 1600, 30fps VGA movie mode, Advanced Shake Reduction (ASR), and face recognition technology. Furthermore, you'll find MP3 / MPEG4 playback support as well as a text viewer, and just in case you didn't take the hint, the onboard HSDPA allows users to beam photos wherever they please (and hastily, too) right after snapping them. Oddly, there's no mention of a memory card format, and not so surprisingly, we're left in the dark regarding price and availability as well, but we don't envision this here runnin' ya cheap whenever it does hit shelves.[Via TrustedReviews]
NCTU's Vision One domesticated servant bot knows your face, follows enemies
Hopefully sooner rather than later, all these domesticated, master-serving robots will be able to handle even the most mundane of tasks for us without botching our reputations, like holding down the 9-5 for us while we tee it up. Until then, however, we'll have to be satisfied with a household bot that not only recognizes our face, understands hand gestures, and follows us around to see if we need help, but chases foes away too. A team of researchers at Hsinchu-based National Chiao Tung University (NCTU) has developed just the companion, and this motorized fellow (or dame, whichever you prefer) sports a unique "digital vision system" that gives it the ability to "not only to remember the master, but also recognize his or her gestures and offer services accordingly." Moreover, it can reportedly judge the person's current health condition by analyzing facial expressions, and can then proceed to fetch medicine, a telephone, or another person in the home to provide aid. Clearly designed to assist the elderly, which could have difficultly caring entirely for themselves, the NCTU Vision One can reportedly distinguish between intruders and family members, and it can even be set to chase away the baddies while taking pictures of him / her for future prosecution purposes. While we've no idea if this classroom invention will ever hit the production line, this thing is a kitchen sink away from being the whole enchilada, and the whole "chasing function" simply makes this a must-have if it eventually comes to market.[Via RobotGossip]
Face recognition system identifies terrorists so soldiers don't have to
It's not often that we come across new technology that physically makes us sick to write about, but when we do encounter such morally questionable tech, nine times out of ten it's something to do with facilitating the killing of other human beings. A small company specializing in visual image processing called ACAGI Inc., in partnership with researchers at the University of Maryland, has developed a portable face recognition system called the Image Acquisition and Exploitation Camera System which is intended to help soldiers recall faces in crowded areas. The system, which can run over video cameras in the gun barrel or on the soldier's helmet, will notify users when someone who was present previously turns up at the soldiers current location, which should help them identify trouble makers. In ACAGI CEO Peter Spatharis' own words: "If our system sees somebody it knows, it tells you, and it tells others so quick decisions can be made" -- and let's just say that those "quick decisions" he refers to aren't spur of the moment invitations to tea parties back at the barracks. Possibly the scariest "feature" of the face recognition system is that it can be hooked up to an existing hit list database of naughty people's mugs which can then be referenced against real world data from a camera. Just what we need: software telling us which people live and which ones die. Um, hasn't anyone ever heard of Skynet?[Via The Raw Feed]
Fujifilm's FinePix S5 Pro DSLR and F31fd
Photokina is about to get started and with it, a couple of new shooters from Fujifilm. The FinePix S5 Pro DSLR pictured above is their followup to the S3 Pro and incorporates the same 12.3 megapixel Super CCD SR Pro sensor only now featuring Fujifilm's new RP (Real Photo) Processor Pro. So check it wedding photographers 'cause Fujifilm claims the new S5 provides an ever greater dynamic range with smoother tonality from highlight to shadow said to rival that of 35mm film. Improvements are also announced in the aufo-focus, i-TTL flash, metering, battery-life, DR control, and ISO 3200 sensitivity. We'll have to wait and see since the S5 Pro won't be out until February 2007. Also announced is the 6.3 megpaixel FinePix F31fd which is just the F30 with a bit of a cosmetic lift to pack-in their hardware-based face recognitation technology we've seen before. Look for the F31fd to drop (in the UK anyway) starting late November. Expect pricing on both closer to their respective launch dates. Pics of the F31fd after the break.Read -- FinePix S5 ProRead -- FinePix F31fd
Oki to provide face recognition for Pantech handsets
Okay, okay, maybe we went a little rough on Pantech's SKY IM-R100 on the first go around, panning it for offering nothing of particular value in its bizarre pivot-slide form factor. It turns out we missed one important detail: the IM-R100 will be Pantech's first handset to integrate Oki's FaceSensingEngine, a relatively lightweight face recognition system that's supposedly well-suited to devices with limited memory and processor power. Oki claims that faces can be locked onto in 115 milliseconds and tracked in just 35 in a variety of indoor and outdoor lighting situations. For their part, Pantech is initially using the system to automatically center the camera when taking pictures, but we have to assume there are some gaming applications to be found here as well. So again, IM-R100, we're sorry for beating up on ya the first time around; lesson learned.[Via Slashphone]
Fujifilm's face-finding FinePix: the S6000fd
With some extreme ISO action, and a flashy face-recognizing auto focus feature, Fujifilm has quite an alluring offering in their new FinePix S6000fd (known as the S6500fd globally). The 2.5-inch LCD and 6.3 megapixel CCD shouldn't turn too many heads, but the wide-angle manual control 10.7x zoom lens and the 100-3200 ISO sensitivity is nothing to sneeze at. Fujiflim's hardware-based Face Detection tech allows the camera to zero in on the sentient humans in frame -- instead of that wall behind them -- and does its focusing mojo in a mere 0.04 seconds. This, combined with other automatic enhancements, allows Joe Hobbyist to take advantage of the camera's advanced optics without having to fiddle with manual controls, promising better lighting and less blurring in more situations. Unfortunately, "Picture Stabilization," which merely bumps the ISO automatically is a lame substitute for actual optical image stabilization, but there aren't many other cut corners, and Fujifilm has managed to get the price pretty low. The S6000fd should be out in September for around $500.
Tokyo train station gets facial scan payment systems
First they want to scan our brains for passwords, now they want to scan our faces as train passes? Privacy advocates, get on your tin foil hats facemasks, we've received report that Tokyo's Kasumigaseki Station will be shutting down their totally antiquated FeliCa RFID / NFC payment systems for an hour or two daily for a couple weeks, and switching on biometric cameras that snap faces, match them to train passes, and grant entry (or deny it if your train fare's depleted or late, or you, you know, are a terrorist). Despite lawyers calling it of questionable or outright dubious legality, it's gonna happen over there alright -- at least at Kasumigaseki Station -- so if you're in Tokyo and use this station, we have two suggestions: first is to wear a rubber mask of your pal so as to get on free and avoid detection. Second is to go to the next stop down the road in a show of protest for this system and in support of basic civil liberties and rights to privacy. You know, either works.[Via Smart Mobs]
