Computers That See You and Keep Watch Over You

Eugen Leitl eugen at leitl.org
Mon Jan 3 08:57:57 PST 2011


http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/02/science/02see.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print

Computers That See You and Keep Watch Over You

By STEVE LOHR

Hundreds of correctional officers from prisons across America descended last
spring on a shuttered penitentiary in West Virginia for annual training
exercises.

Some officers played the role of prisoners, acting like gang members and
stirring up trouble, including a mock riot. The latest in prison gear got a
workout b body armor, shields, riot helmets, smoke bombs, gas masks. And, at
this yearbs drill, computers that could see the action.

Perched above the prison yard, five cameras tracked the play-acting
prisoners, and artificial-intelligence software analyzed the images to
recognize faces, gestures and patterns of group behavior. When two groups of
inmates moved toward each other, the experimental computer system sent an
alert b a text message b to a corrections officer that warned of a potential
incident and gave the location.

The computers cannot do anything more than officers who constantly watch
surveillance monitors under ideal conditions. But in practice, officers are
often distracted. When shifts change, an observation that is worth passing
along may be forgotten. But machines do not blink or forget. They are
tireless assistants.

The enthusiasm for such systems extends well beyond the nationbs prisons.
High-resolution, low-cost cameras are proliferating, found in products like
smartphones and laptop computers. The cost of storing images is dropping, and
new software algorithms for mining, matching and scrutinizing the flood of
visual data are progressing swiftly.

A computer-vision system can watch a hospital room and remind doctors and
nurses to wash their hands, or warn of restless patients who are in danger of
falling out of bed. It can, through a computer-equipped mirror, read a manbs
face to detect his heart rate and other vital signs. It can analyze a womanbs
expressions as she watches a movie trailer or shops online, and help
marketers tailor their offerings accordingly. Computer vision can also be
used at shopping malls, schoolyards, subway platforms, office complexes and
stadiums.

All of which could be helpful b or alarming.

bMachines will definitely be able to observe us and understand us better,b
said Hartmut Neven, a computer scientist and vision expert at Google. bWhere
that leads is uncertain.b

Google has been both at the forefront of the technologybs development and a
source of the anxiety surrounding it. Its Street View service, which lets
Internet users zoom in from above on a particular location, faced privacy
complaints. Google will blur out peoplebs homes at their request.

Google has also introduced an application called Goggles, which allows people
to take a picture with a smartphone and search the Internet for matching
images. The companybs executives decided to exclude a facial-recognition
feature, which they feared might be used to find personal information on
people who did not know that they were being photographed.

Despite such qualms, computer vision is moving into the mainstream. With this
technological evolution, scientists predict, people will increasingly be
surrounded by machines that can not only see but also reason about what they
are seeing, in their own limited way.

The uses, noted Frances Scott, an expert in surveillance technologies at the
National Institute of Justice, the Justice Departmentbs research agency,
could allow the authorities to spot a terrorist, identify a lost child or
locate an Alzheimerbs patient who has wandered off.

The future of law enforcement, national security and military operations will
most likely rely on observant machines. A few months ago, the Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Pentagonbs research arm, awarded the
first round of grants in a five-year research program called the Mindbs Eye.
Its goal is to develop machines that can recognize, analyze and communicate
what they see. Mounted on small robots or drones, these smart machines could
replace human scouts. bThese things, in a sense, could be team members,b said
James Donlon, the programbs manager.

Millions of people now use products that show the progress that has been made
in computer vision. In the last two years, the major online photo-sharing
services b Picasa by Google, Windows Live Photo Gallery by Microsoft, Flickr
by Yahoo and iPhoto by Apple b have all started using face recognition. A
user puts a name to a face, and the service finds matches in other
photographs. It is a popular tool for finding and organizing pictures.

Kinect, an add-on to Microsoftbs Xbox 360 gaming console, is a striking
advance for computer vision in the marketplace. It uses a digital camera and
sensors to recognize people and gestures; it also understands voice commands.
Players control the computer with waves of the hand, and then move to make
their on-screen animated stand-ins b known as avatars b run, jump, swing and
dance. Since Kinect was introduced in November, game reviewers have
applauded, and sales are surging.

To Microsoft, Kinect is not just a game, but a step toward the future of
computing. bItbs a world where technology more fundamentally understands you,
so you donbt have to understand it,b said Alex Kipman, an engineer on the
team that designed Kinect.

bPlease Wash Your Handsb

A nurse walks into a hospital room while scanning a clipboard. She greets the
patient and washes her hands. She checks and records his heart rate and blood
pressure, adjusts the intravenous drip, turns him over to look for bed sores,
then heads for the door but does not wash her hands again, as protocol
requires. bPardon the interruption,b declares a recorded womenbs voice, with
a slight British accent. bPlease wash your hands.b

Three months ago, Bassett Medical Center in Cooperstown, N.Y., began an
experiment with computer vision in a single hospital room. Three small
cameras, mounted inconspicuously on the ceiling, monitor movements in Room
542, in a special care unit (a notch below intensive care) where patients are
treated for conditions like severe pneumonia, heart attacks and strokes. The
cameras track people going in and out of the room as well as the patientbs
movements in bed.

The first applications of the system, designed by scientists at General
Electric, are immediate reminders and alerts. Doctors and nurses are supposed
to wash their hands before and after touching a patient; lapses contribute
significantly to hospital-acquired infections, research shows.

The camera over the bed delivers images to software that is programmed to
recognize movements that indicate when a patient is in danger of falling out
of bed. The system would send an alert to a nearby nurse.

If the results at Bassett prove to be encouraging, more features can be
added, like software that analyzes facial expressions for signs of severe
pain, the onset of delirium or other hints of distress, said Kunter Akbay, a
G.E. scientist.

Hospitals have an incentive to adopt tools that improve patient safety.
Medicare and Medicaid are adjusting reimbursement rates to penalize hospitals
that do not work to prevent falls and pressure ulcers, and whose doctors and
nurses do not wash their hands enough. But it is too early to say whether
computer vision, like the system being tried out at Bassett, will prove to be
cost-effective.

Mirror, Mirror

Daniel J. McDuff, a graduate student, stood in front of a mirror at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technologybs Media Lab. After 20 seconds or so, a
figure b 65, the number of times his heart was beating per minute b appeared
at the mirrorbs bottom. Behind the two-way mirror was a Web camera, which fed
images of Mr. McDuff to a computer whose software could track the blood flow
in his face.

The software separates the video images into three channels b for the basic
colors red, green and blue. Changes to the colors and to movements made by
tiny contractions and expansions in blood vessels in the face are, of course,
not apparent to the human eye, but the computer can see them.

bYour heart-rate signal is in your face,b said Ming-zher Poh, an M.I.T.
graduate student. Other vital signs, including breathing rate, blood-oxygen
level and blood pressure, should leave similar color and movement clues.

The pulse-measuring project, described in research published in May by Mr.
Poh, Mr. McDuff and Rosalind W. Picard, a professor at the lab, is just the
beginning, Mr. Poh said. Computer vision and clever software, he said, make
it possible to monitor humansb vital signs at a digital glance. Daily
measurements can be analyzed to reveal that, for example, a personbs risk of
heart trouble is rising. bThis can happen, and in the future it will be in
mirrors,b he said.

Faces can yield all sorts of information to watchful computers, and the
M.I.T. studentsb adviser, Dr. Picard, is a pioneer in the field, especially
in the use of computing to measure and communicate emotions. For years, she
and a research scientist at the university, Rana el-Kaliouby, have applied
facial-expression analysis software to help young people with autism better
recognize the emotional signals from others that they have such a hard time
understanding.

The two women are the co-founders of Affectiva, a company in Waltham, Mass.,
that is beginning to market its facial-expression analysis software to
manufacturers of consumer products, retailers, marketers and movie studios.
Its mission is to mine consumersb emotional responses to improve the designs
and marketing campaigns of products.

John Ross, chief executive of Shopper Sciences, a marketing research company
that is part of the Interpublic Group, said Affectivabs technology promises
to give marketers an impartial reading of the sequence of emotions that leads
to a purchase, in a way that focus groups and customer surveys cannot. bYou
can see and analyze how people are reacting in real time, not what they are
saying later, when they are often trying to be polite,b he said. The
technology, he added, is more scientific and less costly than having humans
look at store surveillance videos, which some retailers do.

The facial-analysis software, Mr. Ross said, could be used in store kiosks or
with Webcams. Shopper Sciences, he said, is testing Affectivabs software with
a major retailer and an online dating service, neither of which he would
name. The dating service, he said, was analyzing usersb expressions in search
of btrigger wordsb in personal profiles that people found appealing or
off-putting.

Watching the Watchers

Maria Sonin, 33, an office worker in Waltham, Mass., sat in front of a
notebook computer looking at a movie trailer while Affectivabs software,
through the PCbs Webcam, calibrated her reaction. The trailer was for bLittle
Fockers,b starring Robert De Niro and Ben Stiller, which opened just before
Christmas. The software measured her reactions by tracking movements on a
couple of dozen points on her face b mostly along the eyes, eyebrows, nose
and the perimeter of her lips.

To the human eye, Ms. Sonin appeared to be amused. The software agreed, said
Dr. Kaliouby, though it used a finer-grained analysis, like recording that
her smiles were symmetrical (signaling amusement, not embarrassment) and not
smirks. The software, Ms. Kaliouby said, allows for continuous, objective
measurement of viewersb response to media, and in the future will do so in
large numbers on the Web.

Ms. Sonin, an unpaid volunteer, said later that she did not think about being
recorded by the Webcam. bIt wasnbt as if it was a big camera in front of
you,b she said.

Christopher Hamilton, a technical director of visual effects, has used
specialized software to analyze facial expressions and recreate them on the
screen. The films he has worked on include bKing Kong,b bCharlottebs Webb and
bThe Matrix Revolutions.b Using facial-expression analysis technology to
gauge the reaction of viewers, who agree to be watched, may well become a
valuable tool for movie makers, said Mr. Hamilton, who is not involved with
Affectiva.

Today, sampling audience reaction before a movie is released typically means
gathering a couple of hundred people at a preview screening. The audience
members then answer questions and fill out surveys. Yet viewers, marketing
experts say, are often inarticulate and imprecise about their emotional
reactions.

The software bmakes it possible to measure audience response with a
scene-by-scene granularity that the current survey-and-questionnaire approach
cannot,b Mr. Hamilton said. A director, he added, could find out, for
example, that although audience members liked a movie over all, they did not
like two or three scenes. Or he could learn that a particular character did
not inspire the intended emotional response.

Emotion-sensing software, Mr. Hamilton said, might become part of the
entertainment experience b especially as more people watch movies and
programs on Internet-connected televisions, computers and portable devices.
Viewers could share their emotional responses with friends using
recommendation systems based on what scene b say, the protagonistsb dancing
or a car chase b delivered the biggest emotional jolt.

Affectiva, Dr. Picard said, intends to offer its technology as bopt-in only,b
meaning consumers have to be notified and have to agree to be watched online
or in stores. Affectiva, she added, has turned down companies, which she
declined to name, that wanted to use its software without notifying
customers.

Darker Possibilities

Dr. Picard enunciates a principled stance, but one that could become
problematic in other hands.

The challenge arises from the prospect of the rapid spread of less-expensive
yet powerful computer-vision technologies.

At work or school, the technology opens the door to a computerized supervisor
that is always watching. Are you paying attention, goofing off or
daydreaming? In stores and shopping malls, smart surveillance could bring
behavioral tracking into the physical world.

More subtle could be the effect of a person knowing that he is being watched
b and how that awareness changes his thinking and actions. It could be
beneficial: a person thinks twice and a crime goes uncommitted. But might it
also lead to a society that is less spontaneous, less creative, less
innovative?

bWith every technology, there is a dark side,b said Hany Farid, a computer
scientist at Dartmouth. bSometimes you can predict it, but often you canbt.b

A decade ago, he noted, no one predicted that cellphones and text messaging
would lead to traffic accidents caused by distracted drivers. And, he said,
it was difficult to foresee that the rise of Facebook and Twitter and
personal blogs would become troves of data to be collected and exploited in
tracking peoplebs online behavior.

Often, a technology that is benign in one setting can cause harm in a
different context. Google confronted that problem this year with its
face-recognition software. In its Picasa photo-storing and sharing service,
face recognition helps people find and organize pictures of family and
friends.

But the company took a different approach with Goggles, which lets a person
snap a photograph with a smartphone, setting off an Internet search. Take a
picture of the Eiffel Tower and links to Web pages with background
information and articles about it appear on the phonebs screen. Take a
picture of a wine bottle and up come links to reviews of that vintage.

Google could have put face recognition into the Goggles application; indeed,
many users have asked for it. But Google decided against it because
smartphones can be used to take pictures of individuals without their
knowledge, and a face match could retrieve all kinds of personal information
b name, occupation, address, workplace.

bIt was just too sensitive, and we didnbt want to go there,b said Eric E.
Schmidt, the chief executive of Google. bYou want to avoid enabling stalker
behavior.b





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