Technology faces up to a question of identity

Facial-recognition use grows as accuracy rises, cost declines

Wei Xiaoyong, an associate professor at Sichuan University, used to worry about taking roll call for his class of 100 students.

"It is time-consuming. But students who attend classes every day say it is unfair if I do not do it."

Wei eventually found the solution - a face recognition system.

With the system, all he has to do is to use an ordinary pocket camera to take a picture of the class. Wei then uploads the picture and the computer will automatically find out who showed up for class.

Wei has not noted a single absence since he started using the system.

An attendance checking and access machine, based on face recognition technology, being displayed at an exhibition in Shenyang, Liaoning province, on April 23, 2009. Huang Jinkun / for China Daily

The technology is set to challenge fingerprint and other methods of identification.

According to Bosi Data R&D, a Beijing-based consulting company, the market for face recognition was worth about 670 million yuan ($108.64 million) in 2010 and is expected to increase to 1.4 billion yuan by 2015. Public security and customs are the main areas where it is employed, but its use is set to expand.

The technology used for security and that used for checking-in systems share the similar technical procedures. Both include photo capturing, pre-processing, feature locating, offline registration and online template matching.

However, an engineer specializing in the technology insists that any application for security demands even greater accuracy.

"Security use always requires a more rigorous operating environment and increased accuracy, therefore, more complex core algorithms are used," said Zheng Nanning, a top artificial intelligence scientist in China, and a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

Face recognition has been intensively studied for more than four decades but was largely limited to the security field due to its cost.

In September, the FBI invested $1 billion on Next Generation Identification, which included plans to install "state-of-the-art" facial recognition technology across the United States.