Hello listers,
I think many of you on the list will be surprised at the current state of
face-recognition software. At this rate of evolution, some interesting
possibilities will open up in a very few years.
Here's the full text from a press release issued today from USC.
--Bryan Bashin
---------- Forwarded message ----------
>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
Contact: Eric Mankin (213-740-9344) 0897017
email: emankin@usc.edu
'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.
"Until now," says Christoph von der Malsburg, the computer
scientist and brain theorist who developed the system, "face-
recognition software has needed to have the raw material, the
images of faces, given to it in a highly structured form: a clear still
photograph of a subject looking right at the camera.
"Our existing system is able to make identifications even
with substandard images. With the addition of the 'Mugspot' video
processing system, which expands its ability to capture images, I
think it will prove useful in many real-life situations, particularly in
law enforcement," says Dr. von der Malsburg, a professor in the
USC School of Engineering's department of computer science.
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.
In tabulations released Aug. 19 by the ARL, the
USC/Bochum system outperformed competitors from laboratories
across the country including MIT, the University of Maryland,
Rutgers, Michigan State University and three systems developed
by the Army itself.
The labs were ranked according to their performance on
each of 12 separate runs, from 1 (best) to 12 (worst). The
USC/Bochum system recorded six first, three seconds and two
thirds, for a total of 18. The next best score was 24 -- a tie between
MIT and the University of Maryland.
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
Jim Lytle, Editor
USC News Service
Phone: (213) 740-4751
Fax: (213) 740-7600
Email: jlytle@usc.edu
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