Posted by ljmacphee on December 3, 2007 under artificial intelligence in the news, computer vision | 
A technology that senses changes in emotions is being developed to help aged care, driver safety and anxiety in people. I’m betting Big Brother will also find some useful things to do with the technology.
The technology uses changes in speech rhythms and pitch; and changes in facial expressions. Interestingly short term nervousness shows in speech and long term in facial expressions.
A technology that can recognize anxiety in people is being developed by an Australian computer scientist.Australian National University researcher Gordon McIntyre says the technology could be applied in a range of areas from aged care to driver safety.McIntyre, a PhD student from the Research School of Information Services and Engineering, is working on a computer system that detects anxiety by analysing a person’s speech and facial expressions. [ read more Technology tunes into our emotions ]
More information:
Researching emotions in speech
Gordon McIntyre, homepage
See also:
Computer uses 3D face recognition to diagnose genetic diseases
Computer recognizes you by your typing skills or lack thereof
Posted by ljmacphee on October 29, 2007 under artificial intelligence in the news, computer vision |
New technology to scan facial features may allow doctors to diagnose rare genetic conditions in children.The new software, shown at the BA Festival of Science in York, is able to compare facial features with a database of images of people who have the conditions.Scientists say the new software has a 90% success rate.Professor Peter Hammond, a computer scientist at the UCL Institute for Child Health in London and part of the research team, said that many conditions can cause particular facial features as a result of “alterations in the genes”.Over 700 genetic disorders have an effect on facial features, although many are hard to diagnose because of a lack of information or subjects.[read more . . . Face scans help gene diagnosis ]
See also:
3D face scans spot gene syndromes
Discriminating Power of Localized 3 Dimensional Facial Morphology
Delineation and Visualization of Congenital Abnormality using 3D Facial Images
Posted by ljmacphee on September 28, 2007 under artificial intelligence in the news, computer vision |
Face recognition technology is now far enough along and mainstream enough that is it available to the masses. At least if you buy your notebook from NEC.
NEC has launched two new series of laptops with a unique security feature called “face pass” — or, in Japanese, “kao pass.”
The LaVie C and LaVie L series will both include the new facial recognition software, which enables only a programmed user to log on to the computer.NEC’s software, called “NeoFace,” is a biometric system that uses a combination of eye zone extraction and facial recognition to identify the computer’s user. To program the system, a user sets up a profile with three photographs of their face. Then when a user tries to log on, an integrated 2.0 megapixel camera scans their facial characteristics.
The NeoFace system then uses a matching procedure to determine the identity of the user. NEC says that the system performs accurate matching even when people wear glasses and hats, have different haircuts or facial hair, and show different facial expressions. The ability to distinguish between identical twins is still speculative.
“NeoFace uses a technology called ‘adaptive region mixed matching,’ which focuses on ‘segment regions’ with a high degree of similarity for matching,” explained Atsushi Sato, a head researcher at NEC. “Other makers’ products make judgments based on a number of combined characteristics, such as the distance between the eyes and the nose, or the nose and the mouth. But this creates a problem, because if even one of these segments is missing, the accuracy drops dramatically.
“In contrast, NeoFace divides the input image and the registered image into small segments, and focused only on the segments that are highly similar,” he continued. “This enables the system to achieve higher authentication accuracy than out competitors’ products, even if a part of the subject’s face is hidden, for example by a mask or sunglasses.”
‘Face pass’ is latest security system for NEC Laptops
See also:
NEC NeoFace
Advances in Face Detection and Recognition Technologies ( pdf)
Posted by ljmacphee on August 29, 2007 under artificial intelligence in the news, computer vision |
In a radical new approach to solving identiy theft, CBL researchers are using three-dimensional information to obtain a unique biometric signature of a person’s face. With cutting-edge hardware and novel algorithms, they are designing system that turns a process practically as effortless as taking a photograph into a powerful authentication protocol.
Remembering dozens of personal identification numbers and passwords is not the solution to identity theft. Both are inconvenient to memorize and impractical to safeguard, and in essence merely tie two pieces of information together. Once the secret is compromised, the rest follows. The solution is to be able to tie private information to its owner in a way that cannot be compromised - biometric authentication
The CBL’s URxD system has the potential to move face recognition technology to the high performance gear needed for widespread application. The system determines not only the characteristics of each face, but also whether the person is wearing glasses, allowing for a practical system which offers high accuracy. So far, face recognition methods have focused on appearance - capturing, representing, and matching facial characteristics as they appear on two-dimensional images in the visible spectrum. This is quite challenging to machine recognition because such characteristics vary with orientation, age, habits (e.g., bearded appearance), and illumination. Instead, our system uses three-dimensional information, and has achieved the best published results when tried to 4,007 datasets (part of the international face recognition Grand Challenge organized by NIST). These results show strong promise in overcoming the difficult problems that have been holding back progress in this field for many years.
Biometrics - your face is your password
Cory Doctorow: The Totalitarian Urge: total information awareness and the cosmic billiards * the mp3 has a long intro, be patient the talk is worth it. This talk presents the other side of using bioinformatics as id.
While we all want to protect our identities it will change the nature of the internet and greatly reduce the freedom we enjoy online and off. Always trade offs, we just have to decide which ones we are willing to make.
Posted by ljmacphee on July 23, 2007 under artificial intelligence in the news, computer vision |
Vision and Robotics Joint special issue has 8 free online articles on computer vision and robotics.
Articles:
+Editorial: Special Issue on Vision and Robotics Parts I and II
+Omnidirectional Vision Based Topological Navigation
+Monocular Vision for Mobile Robot Localization and Autonomous Navigation
+Detecting Loop Closure with Scene Sequences
+Reverse Optical Flow for Self-Supervised Adaptive Autonomous Robot
+A Study of the Rao-Blackwellised Particle Filter for Efficient and Accurate Vision Based SLAM
+Design Through Operation of an Image-Based Velocity Estimation System for Mars Landing
+Vision-Based SLAM: Stereo and Monocular Approaches
International Journal of Robotics has articles:
+Editorial: Special Issue on Vision and Robotics Parts I and II
+Recognizing Assembly Tasks Through Human Demonstration
+Homography-based 2D Visual Tracking and Servoing
+Image-based Visual Servoing of a Gough
+Real-Time Hybrid Tracking using Edge and Texture Information
+Visual Servoing for Nonholonomically Constrained Three Degree of Freedom Kinematics
+Autonomous Stair Climbing for Tracked Vehicles
+A fly-locust based neuronal control system applied to unmanned aerial vehicle