From: Jeffrey Waters 000-000-0000
Date: 06 Nov 1997 08:23:26 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Finding a Face in the Crowd
Found this on a visit to "Science NEWS - EurekAlert! Public Contents"
at http://www.eurekalert.org . Interesting to note that the technology
was developed with US military funding and is commercially marketed in
the EU.
Oh well Mr. Orwell, you've never believe how far we've come...
"Mugspot" Can Find A Face In The Crowd - Award-Winning Face-Recognition
Software Prepares to Go to Work in the Streets
Computer "eyes" are now up to such tasks as watching for fugitives in
airline terminals and other busy locations. A sophisticated
face-recognition system that placed first in recent Army competitive
trials has been given the added ability to pick out faces in noisy or
chaotic "street" environments.
The new "Mugspot" software module developed at the University of
Southern California automatically analyzes video images, looking for
passers-by. When it finds them, it picks out the heads in the images
and then tracks the heads for as long as they remain in the camera's
field.
Throughout this tracking process, the software is watching for the best
possible view of the subject's face -- the one that shows him or her
looking most directly at the camera. It selects the best view presented
and passes it on to the main face-recognition program.
This face-recognition software, developed at USC and the University of
Bochum, Germany, and now in commercial use for clients such as
Germany's Deutsche Bank, is robust enough to make identifications from
less-than- perfect face views. It can also often see through such
impediments to identification as mustaches, beards, changed hair styles
and glasses -- even sunglasses.
<...snip...>
Cameras mounted in airports and bus stations, or aimed at oncoming cars
at traffic intersections, might continuously watch for known fugitives,
von der Malsburg says. Bank surveillance cameras could identify persons
seen at previous bank robberies.
The Mugspot system can scan eight video frames per second in real time,
and takes about 13 seconds to select the best view, process it for
identification, compare it to the several hundred faces in its memory
and decide whether it has found a match.
The three research associates who developed Mugspot with von der
Malsburg -- USC graduate student Egor Elagin, postdoctoral researcher
Hartmut Neven and Bochum University visiting graduate student Johannes
Steffens -- believe further refinement of the system can shorten that
time by half.
Mugspot is only the latest improvement in the USC/Bochum face
recognition software, developed with funds from the Army Research
Laboratory (ARL) and marketed commercially in Europe under the
trade-name ZN-Face.
<...snip...>
The USC/Bochum system also shone in tests conducted under substandard
lighting conditions: It lost only a small fraction of its accuracy,
while competitors showed drastic falloffs in less-than-brilliant
illumination.
The USC/Bochum system uses an unusual approach that mimics the
technique scientists believe the brain uses to recognize images. Von
der Malsburg, whose principal research interests lie in the
investigation of living brains, in fact carried out much of the
original research on the system as part of an attempt to understand
human face recognition. His research led to creating a computer model
of the way the brain's visual cortex processes information.
EM.MALSBURG3 -USC- NOV. 5, 1997
For Immediate Release: 5 November 1997
Contact: Eric Mankin mankin@usc.edu 213 740 9344
from the University of Southern California News Service 3620 South
Vermont Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90089-2538 Tel: 213 740 2215 Fax: 213
740 7600 http://www.usc.edu
