All about faces

Let’s face it.

The one thing that launched a thousand ships in the mythical olden days is not an army or an ideology but a face, albeit a supremely beautiful one by Greek standards.

Now if your own face — picture pretty, pimpled, creased, pockmarked even — can open doors, unlock security codes, crack an encryption or launch a software, what benefit will it give the computing public?

Security experts say, no one can rob you of your face, unlike keys, cards or passwords. And would you dare lose or break your face?

In yet another cap to the binary efficiency of machines, X-iD Technologies recently launched Face LogOn Xpress, a software application that uses a person’s face for gaining access to secure environments such as doors or computers.

The “face” behind this innovative application is a company involved in computer graphics and developing solutions “related to the human face.” X-iD Technologies, according to its website, provides solutions such as face detection, face recognition, face synthesis, 3D face animation, 3D avatars, among others — all in the name of personalization of media content.

X-iD’s top executives CEO Mike Holt and sales director Steve Seah were in town last week of June to introduce to the local market, with Columbia Technologies Inc. (CTI), its new application.

“The same technology we give to power facilities and highly secure environments is now the same technology we are giving the mass market,” says Seah in a presentation to journalists.

According to Seah, X-iD is the only company that can do outdoor face recognition that works even if lighting conditions vary.

“Face recognition technology has been around for quite some time but face recognition fails because of changes in lighting conditions,” he explains, claiming that Face LogOn Xpress works even in spaces such as airports, hotel lobbies or dark rooms where lighting conditions are not controlled.

This application, he reports, is now in use by over 60,000 people in Singapore and China, specifically in factories and dormitories. Instead of swiping a card at the door, factory workers or dorm residents merely flash their electronic ID and show their faces on the monitor and they are given or denied access.

The “face” pass works even if one grows a beard, wears eyeglasses or medical masks, changes hairstyle, plants an artificial mole or wears heavy makeup, says Seah. A technology called face synthesis, which can generate a thousand possible images, contortions, expressions or views of the human face, helps reduce the error rate of face recognition technologies that have been around for many years.

To register a face in the database, Holt says, requires a very simple procedure. Any single 2D photo taken from an ordinary digital camera can be used. That photo will be processed to generate thousands of possible variations the system can recognize so when the actual person shows up at the door or uses it in an application, the machine can “recognize” that person.

“Once you have a face, there’s a lot you can do with it,” Seah says. Besides its use as access pass to offices, schools or residences, the file can be used in a variety of ways, such as in the making of personal avatars, in opening personal PCs or laptops, in encrypting confidential office files.

Holt says that X-iD actually has two business divisions — access business and the Internet and network media business. It is in the latter that they are seeing tremendous growth in the next few years due to the growth spurt in the use of personal media such as notebooks and PCs. Although, he says, the software’s business application has been growing tremendously in the last few years. In fact, the company would be launching Face LogOn Xpress Advance in September and Face LogOn Xpress Ultimate in November.

Local systems partner CTI is rolling out the technology in the Philippines in three weeks’ time.

Jose Ramos, CTI president, discloses that besides schools, offices, dormitories, hotels and residences, other target clients for Face LogOn are home users.

Ramos says they are looking into this market seriously as more and more people require added security passes for their homes. Very soon, Face LogOn will also be a standard feature in Acer computers as Windows log-on.

Pablo Picasso was quoted once: “Who sees the human face correctly: the photographer, the mirror, or the painter?”

Now, shall we say the computer?