- Email: [email protected]
Aurora reveals LFW-topping face recognition
NEWS It reports that the Center for Digital Democracy had asked for the presentations, pointing to those companies’ expertise and the need for stakeholders to better understand the technology as they try to come up with voluntary privacy guidelines to flesh out the US privacy Bill of Rights framework. Neither Google nor Facebook were under any obligation to present or participate. This comes as researchers revealed software that allows Facebook to enable facial recognition that is described as on a par with human recognition levels. Facebook noted the findings on the publications area of its website https://www. facebook.com/publications/546316888800776/. Its researchers will present the paper ‘DeepFace: Closing the Gap to Human-Level Performance in Face Verification’ at the Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) in June. They point out that in face recognition systems, the conventional pipeline consists of four stages: detect, align, represent and classify. They have revisited the alignment and the representation steps, employing explicit 3D face modelling in order to apply a piecewise affine transformation, and derive a face representation from a nine-layer deep neural network. This deep network involves more than 120m parameters using several locally connected layers without weight sharing, rather than the standard convolutional layers. Researchers trained the system on the largest facial dataset to date, an identity labelled dataset of four million facial images belonging to more than 4,000 identities, where each identity has an average of over a thousand samples. The method is reported to reach an accuracy of 97.25% on the Labeled Faces in the Wild (LFW) dataset, closely approaching humanlevel performance.
App to use facial recognition to spot medical conditions
A
n app will use facial recognition technology to spot facial changes that may flag medical conditions. Sharon Moalem, geneticist, has developed an app called Recognyz, reports Mobihealth News. “Many medical conditions and/or syndromes have specific physical features, such as interpupillary distance and skull shape, that are used by physicians or medical allied health workers as an aid in diagnoses,” Moalem’s patent filing says. “For example, increased distance between the eyes of an individual can be an indicator of a condition called Noonan syndrome.”
Aurora reveals LFWtopping face recognition
A
urora has revealed new face recognition technology, now rated as the most accurate system on LFW, the internationally established benchmark run by the University of Massachusetts. The algorithm is achieving a mean classification accuracy of 93.24%, placing it ahead of competitors including NEC, Vision Labs, Face.com, Oxford University, the University of Science and Technology China and Microsoft Research, reports Aurora. The LFW benchmark includes extremely difficult cases: adverse lighting conditions; bad head angles and great variations in image quality. A representative from Aurora says, “We are not talking about a minuscule improvement to an almost perfect system; the technology is demonstrating that it can recognise a category of image that was previously beyond our capabilities.” A summary of the results can be found on Aurora’s website (www.facerec.com/lfw.html). In addition, Aurora has launched a free early beta version of its cloud-based face recognition service. x See feature page 9.
mobile
Global mobile biometrics to see 156.9% growth over five years
T
he global mobile biometrics market is forecast to grow at a CAGR of 156.9% over the period 2013-18, according to TechNavio analysts. One of the key factors contributing to this market growth is the increasing use of personal devices for financial transactions. Technavio points out that the global mobile biometrics market has been witnessing an increasing number of mergers and acquisitions. However, the availability of inexpensive nonbiometrics technologies could pose a challenge to the growth of this market. TechNavio identifies the key vendors dominating this space as including 3M Cogent Inc, Fujitsu, and NEC.
Apple forges ahead with biometrics
A
pple is reported to be working on technology that use biometrics Continued on page 12...
EVENTS CALENDAR 29 April 2014 Brussels
2nd Identities at the Borders seminar This event will bring together border agencies and aviation industry professionals to discuss the future of travel. The event will focus on the Future of Travel (Registered Traveller Programmes) and Automated Border Control. Over 50 delegates attended the first seminar including: Copenhagen Airports, ACI Europe, Federal Police Belgium, Belgian Federal Police, Bundespolizei (BPOL) German Federal Police, Royal Netherlands Marechaussee (KMar) - Ministry of Defence, UK Home Office - UK Border Force, Norwegian ID Centre, IATA and KLM Royal Dutch Airlines. More information: http://www.biometricsinstitute. org/events.php/444/2nd-identities-at-the-bordersseminar
12-14 May 2014 Poly World Trade Centre, Guangzhou, China
Biometric China The exhibition will gather more than 200 brands from China, Germany, US, UK, Switzerland, South Korea, Israel, Japan and other countries and regions. More information: http://www.biometricchina.net/en/
20-22 May 2014 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Biometric Security Forum Asia Biometric Security Forum Asia will take place over three days and will include high-level speakers from Malaysia, Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Europe. It will present and discuss key themes including biometric security issues and trends and solutions for the border industry. The event is holding a site visit to the lab of biometrics centre of the Kuala Lumpur International Airport and will offer a platform for business negotiations between both manufacturers and industry end users. More information: http://www.ib-consultancy.com/ events/event/56-biometric-security-forum-asia-2014.html
28-29 May 2014 Sydney, Australia
Biometrics Institute Asia-Pacific Conference 2014 Formerly known as The Biometrics Institute Australia Conference & Exhibition, the Asia Pacific Conference 2014 will be held at Dockside, Sydney. The conference will provide an insight into the latest developments and best practice examples of biometric technologies. More information: http://www.biometricsinstitute.org/events.php/461/ asia-pacific-conference-2014
10-13 June 2014 Istanbul, Turkey
Border Management and Technologies Summit Border management is becoming a priority in the Balkans and Middle East where governments in the region are looking to invest in securing their international borders. Recent increased pressure to limit refugees and migrants entering Western Europe means governments are reacting by investing in border security. The 2014 event will provide in-depth presentations from the Balkans region, Middle East and Central Asia. More information: http://www.intelligence-sec. com/events/border-management-technologiessummit-2014
3 April 2014
Biometric Technology Today
App to use facial recognition to spot medical conditions
A
n app will use facial recognition technology to spot facial changes that may flag medical conditions. Sharon Moalem, geneticist, has developed an app called Recognyz, reports Mobihealth News. “Many medical conditions and/or syndromes have specific physical features, such as interpupillary distance and skull shape, that are used by physicians or medical allied health workers as an aid in diagnoses,” Moalem’s patent filing says. “For example, increased distance between the eyes of an individual can be an indicator of a condition called Noonan syndrome.”
Aurora reveals LFWtopping face recognition
A
urora has revealed new face recognition technology, now rated as the most accurate system on LFW, the internationally established benchmark run by the University of Massachusetts. The algorithm is achieving a mean classification accuracy of 93.24%, placing it ahead of competitors including NEC, Vision Labs, Face.com, Oxford University, the University of Science and Technology China and Microsoft Research, reports Aurora. The LFW benchmark includes extremely difficult cases: adverse lighting conditions; bad head angles and great variations in image quality. A representative from Aurora says, “We are not talking about a minuscule improvement to an almost perfect system; the technology is demonstrating that it can recognise a category of image that was previously beyond our capabilities.” A summary of the results can be found on Aurora’s website (www.facerec.com/lfw.html). In addition, Aurora has launched a free early beta version of its cloud-based face recognition service. x See feature page 9.
mobile
Global mobile biometrics to see 156.9% growth over five years
T
he global mobile biometrics market is forecast to grow at a CAGR of 156.9% over the period 2013-18, according to TechNavio analysts. One of the key factors contributing to this market growth is the increasing use of personal devices for financial transactions. Technavio points out that the global mobile biometrics market has been witnessing an increasing number of mergers and acquisitions. However, the availability of inexpensive nonbiometrics technologies could pose a challenge to the growth of this market. TechNavio identifies the key vendors dominating this space as including 3M Cogent Inc, Fujitsu, and NEC.
Apple forges ahead with biometrics
A
pple is reported to be working on technology that use biometrics Continued on page 12...
EVENTS CALENDAR 29 April 2014 Brussels
2nd Identities at the Borders seminar This event will bring together border agencies and aviation industry professionals to discuss the future of travel. The event will focus on the Future of Travel (Registered Traveller Programmes) and Automated Border Control. Over 50 delegates attended the first seminar including: Copenhagen Airports, ACI Europe, Federal Police Belgium, Belgian Federal Police, Bundespolizei (BPOL) German Federal Police, Royal Netherlands Marechaussee (KMar) - Ministry of Defence, UK Home Office - UK Border Force, Norwegian ID Centre, IATA and KLM Royal Dutch Airlines. More information: http://www.biometricsinstitute. org/events.php/444/2nd-identities-at-the-bordersseminar
12-14 May 2014 Poly World Trade Centre, Guangzhou, China
Biometric China The exhibition will gather more than 200 brands from China, Germany, US, UK, Switzerland, South Korea, Israel, Japan and other countries and regions. More information: http://www.biometricchina.net/en/
20-22 May 2014 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Biometric Security Forum Asia Biometric Security Forum Asia will take place over three days and will include high-level speakers from Malaysia, Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Europe. It will present and discuss key themes including biometric security issues and trends and solutions for the border industry. The event is holding a site visit to the lab of biometrics centre of the Kuala Lumpur International Airport and will offer a platform for business negotiations between both manufacturers and industry end users. More information: http://www.ib-consultancy.com/ events/event/56-biometric-security-forum-asia-2014.html
28-29 May 2014 Sydney, Australia
Biometrics Institute Asia-Pacific Conference 2014 Formerly known as The Biometrics Institute Australia Conference & Exhibition, the Asia Pacific Conference 2014 will be held at Dockside, Sydney. The conference will provide an insight into the latest developments and best practice examples of biometric technologies. More information: http://www.biometricsinstitute.org/events.php/461/ asia-pacific-conference-2014
10-13 June 2014 Istanbul, Turkey
Border Management and Technologies Summit Border management is becoming a priority in the Balkans and Middle East where governments in the region are looking to invest in securing their international borders. Recent increased pressure to limit refugees and migrants entering Western Europe means governments are reacting by investing in border security. The 2014 event will provide in-depth presentations from the Balkans region, Middle East and Central Asia. More information: http://www.intelligence-sec. com/events/border-management-technologiessummit-2014
3 April 2014
Biometric Technology Today