In your face
Most people get a warm, fuzzy feeling when a human bank teller smiles and says, "Good morning, Mr. Smith. What can I do for you?" But what if an ATM did the sameâ€"without smiling? What if it followed up with, "I know what you did last summer?"
Arguably the least threatening of biometric technologiesâ€"no need to stick a finger or hand into a machine, just stand in front of a cameraâ€"face recognition is also the most far-seeing and intimate of them all.
"Distance is just a matter of [camera] hardware," says Frances Zelazny, marketing manager of Visionics.
The company's Face It Smart CCTV software works with any closed-circuit TV system to locate heads in a video stream, zoom in on facial biometrics such as eyes and cheekbones, capture up to 30,000 faces per database, and find a previously identified face in as little as three seconds. A FaceIt-equipped CCTV system could even follow a given face through a crowd.
The possibilities of that system would thrill George Orwell.
But face recognition has other, less ominous advantages, notes Zelazny.
"It's the only biometric technology that provides continuous monitoring," she says. Step away from an unsecured PC and it doesn't know you're gone, if you used any other log-in method. Anyone can slip into your chair and use your machine. But FaceIt continuously looks for you; if you leave, it can lock down the PC. When you return, you don't have to do anythingâ€"FaceIT sees you and opens things up again.
What if someone peeks over your shoulder? "The system can take any programmable action if a second face appears," says Zelazny, "from ignoring the second face to shutting down.
"Imagine a doctor reading confidential patient records on screen," she continues. "If an unauthorised person came into the room, [FaceIt] could take immediate action to protect the patient's privacy."
Also imagine not having to wait for that ATM to return your card. Just grab the money and run. Innoventry, a joint venture between Wells Fargo and Cash America International, is testing banking kiosks based on FaceIt in convenience stores and supermarkets. It now has more than a million faces in its database.
Zelazny foresees e-commerce as the next big thing for FaceIt. Face recognition could eliminate nearly all of the tedious data entry that online shoppers now endure for all simple purchases. Face recognition could provide irrefutable proof of who ordered all of those videotapes (on second thought, maybe you want to hide your face).
But few PCs are equipped with video camerasâ€"yet. In November, Visionics agreed to supply IBM with FaceIt-enabled digital cameras to be installed on selected laptops. A Pocket PC version of FaceIt was released last May. In August 1999, Intel selected FaceIt as a component of its "Connected E-Home" concept.
"We work only through partners," says Zelazny, citing such OEMs as IBM, Polaroid and Printrak International, a subsidiary of Motorola. Shrink-wrapped camera/software products, meanwhile, are available from Keyware Technologies and Safelink to satisfy large-volume enterprise integrators' needs. Software developers can obtain a software development kit based on ActiveX and COM objects.
