20 Silicon chip Australia’s electronics magazine siliconchip.com.auFig.12: the output from Human’s software, showing specific
identified individuals and their real-time emotional states,
including a ranking for such parameters as angry, happy,
afraid, disgust, consent (?), neutral, surprise (!) and sad.
Fig.13: the use of facial recognition in China is extensive and
advanced. This image comes from Chinese company Megvii
(https://megvii.com/) who combine artificial intelligence
with their facial recognition technology. This shows Face++
which can detect faces within images; mark 106 facial
landmarks; determine face-related attributes including age,
gender, emotion, head pose, eye status, ethnicity, face image
quality and blurriness; compare two facial images and
provide a confidence score as to whether they are the same
face or not; and search a database for a match.be used to generate a 2D image in a specific orientation,
to match with photographs in the database that were taken
with a similar orientation (see Fig.8).
Three-dimensional facial recognition has a high level of
accuracy, equivalent to fingerprint identification, but one
drawback is that it’s much more difficult to acquire data
for the 3D facial database as people are likely to have an
aversion to having their face “scanned”, compared to hav-
ing a simple photograph taken.
Nevertheless, the technique is making inroads and is
used in the new Apple iPhone X (Fig.9). See the video ti-
tled “Using An Infrared Camera To Show How Face ID
Works” at siliconchip.com.au/link/aaob
Skin texture analysis is a supplemental process to facial
recognition. A picture is taken of a section of skin and any
distinguishing lines, skin pores and texture analysed and
reduced to a mathematical identifier. An example of meas-
urements taken might be the size, shape and distance be-
tween pores and/or lines.
This technique can improve the accuracy of face recogni-
tion alone and can help distinguish between identical twins.Uses for facial recognition
There are diverse uses for face recognition, both now
and in the future. Among these (in no particular order) are:- access control to facilities, computers or mobile devices
- for blind people to recognise friends and family
- for finding relevant photos on social media platforms
- border security
- police use
- intelligence agency use
- military use (eg, identifying terrorists)
- identification of unknown people in historical photo-
graphs - finding pictures of known people in collections of pho-
tographs
Use by casinos
Casinos were early adopters of facial recognition technol-
ogy for a variety of reasons, including the ability to exclude
banned individuals from their establishments, including
known “card counters”.
Card counting is a gambling technique banned by casi-
nos worldwide as it improves the chances of the gambler
to win against the house. Another use is to identify gam-blers that make too many winning bets so they can also be
excluded from the premises in future.
A more recent development of facial recognition in casi-
nos is to use software that can determine a gambler’s emo-
tional state, including feelings of anxiety and depression,
by analysing subliminal, involuntary facial expressions.
These may only last for milliseconds and usually are not
noticed by other people (Fig.12).
This software is provided by artificial intelligence start-
up Human (https://wearehuman.io/). In casinos, it is said
to be used to identify problem gamblers as a matter of so-
cial responsibility.
The CEO of Human, Yi Xu said: “The ongoing scanning
of people’s emotions and characteristics in casinos and oth-
er gambling environments has provided our clients with
the ability to flag any extreme highs and lows in players’
emotions, for example, if a player is gambling irresponsi-
bly or while distressed”.
Human’s software also has another interesting applica-
tion. It can be used by poker players to improve their “pok-
er faces” by helping them to train to eliminate any non-
verbal cues they may inadvertently give to other players.
Beyond the casino, Human’s software can also detect
whether someone is lying, disagreeing, nervous or passion-
ate. Applications include identifying the best candidates
for a job, minimising human bias, understanding customer
feelings and predicting human behaviour by understand-
ing their feelings.Use by the government of China
China’s government makes widespread use of sur-
veillance, with street cameras spread throughout their
cities (Fig.13). The national surveillance system is
known as “Xue Liang”, or in English, “Sharp Eyes”.
This network is used for crime prevention but could also
be used to track political activists or even to enforce their
idea of “social credit”, where people who behave in ways