[Blindmath] Facial recognition -- food for thought

[Richard Baldwin]

Most of the math courses that I completed in public school and college
mainly involved completely deterministic concepts such as finding unknown
in sets of algebraic equations, proving theorems in geometry, proving
identities in trigonometry, solving triangle problems using trigonometry,
differentiating functions, integrating functions, playing around with
solids of revolution, etc. They were all good exercises for the brain but
were not very close to real-world problems.

When I made it into engineering college, the problems and their solutions
were closer to the real world but only barely so.

When I completed my first engineering degree and went to work in the real
world, I learned very quickly that problems in the real world are far from
deterministics. In other words, there are very few problems in the real
world that have deterministic solutions. Problems in the real world usually
involve a mix of mathematics, statistics, physics, engineering, computer
science, and other technologies, and there is rarely a single correct
solution for any problem.

Furthermore, the solution to most problems requires the design and
implementation of complex mathematical algorithms, and those algorithms are
most commonly implemented using a computer of some sort. (In my opinion,
every student that receives a technical degree should be required to learn
to program well in at least one programming language.)

By now you must be wondering where this is all heading.

I saw on TV today that shopping malls and large department stores are
installing electronic billboards that use facial recognition to display
advertisements that are likely to be of interest to those persons who can
see the billboard.

I have no idea what the facial recognition algorithm is for categorizing
the viewers in a way that allows for a selection of appropriate
advertisements. However, this tells me that the algorithm doesn't require a
supercomputer to implement. The algorithms must be implemented using
modestly priced computer hardware. Otherwise, they would be too expensive
to include in such billboards.

This makes me wonder if it might be possible to use a small portable
computer to develop a system that will do facial recognition on people
whose faces appear in the field of view of a miniature video camera
embedded in eyeglass frames and to speak information about those people to
the wearer of the glasses.

Science fiction? Maybe so and maybe not.

Dr. Peter Meijer has demonstrated that it is possible to couple a video
camera built into eyeglass frames with a small portable computer and an
appropriate software program (The vOICe) and to create soundscapes that
some blind users find very beneficial (see http://www.seeingwithsound.com/)
as they move through the world.

Not being blind, I can't imagine what it would be like to interact with
other people that you can't see. However, it seems to me that it would be
beneficial for a blind person to know something about another persons
before a conversation begins. Depending on capability, this could range all
the way from rudimentary information such as the probable sex and likely
age of the person, to detailed information such as the identification of
prior acquaintances by name.

Perhaps it is time for a group of blind mathematicians, physicists,
engineers, statisticians, and computer scientists to band together to
produce such a system and to publish it as an open source hardware/software
system.

Food for thought,
Dick Baldwin

-- 
Richard G. Baldwin (Dick Baldwin)
Home of Baldwin's on-line Java Tutorials
http://www.DickBaldwin.com

Professor of Computer Information Technology
Austin Community College
(512) 223-4758
mailto:Baldwin at DickBaldwin.com
http://www.austincc.edu/baldwin/