[Blindmath] Facial recognition -- food for thought

Wed Mar 28 14:58:50 UTC 2012

Hi Carolyn,

Thanks for the list of programs that already do face recognition.

Yes, I am familiar with most of those programs. The thing that
distinguishes the advertising billboard application from the programs that
I am aware of is that the billboard must work in real time to be effective
while the programs that I am aware of don't have that requirement. That is
probably a major distinction in terms of computer speed and optimization of
the mathematical algorithms.

Now to comments made by others regarding the required database. This
application would be unlike an application that is intended to recognize
objects. There are an infinite number, size, color, etc. of objects in the
world so a database intended for that purpose would necessarily be quite
large.

Similarly, in order for such a system to be interesting for the Google
business model, the database would need to store information on billions of
people -- which definitely would require a lot of storage and probably
would lead to privacy concerns.

However, the database that I would need to identify friends and prior
acquaintances would contain facial ID information for a relatively small
number of people. I don't know how much facial data is required to identify
a person, but I am confident that I could store a complete compressed image
of every person that I know on a USB flash drive that I could purchase for
about ten dollars.

And yes, the database would be personal, and yes it would be necessary for
me to build it up over time with permission from those whose ID information
is saved in the database. Would building such a database be a hassle? I
would equate it to the hassle involved in creating a family photo album.

Dick Baldwin

On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 7:03 AM, Carolyn MacLeod <Carolyn_MacLeod at ca.ibm.com
> wrote:

> Not sure if this is useful, and you probably already know, but Microsoft's
> Windows Live Photo Gallery and Picasa and iPhoto (and some others) have a
> feature called face-tagging.
> They work surprisingly well, although they need someone to identify photos
> and confirm guesses, and they do make some ridiculous mistakes sometimes.
> If you have Windows 7 or Vista, you may already have Windows Live Photo
> Gallery installed - to find out, open the Start menu and type "Windows
> Live Photo Gallery" in the Search field, then Enter.
> If not, here's a link with a download button:
> http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/products/features/photo-gallery
> Carolyn
>
>
>
>
> From:
> Richard Baldwin <baldwin at dickbaldwin.com>
> To:
> BlindMath Mailing List <blindmath at nfbnet.org>,
> seeingwithsound at freelists.org
> Date:
> 03/27/2012 11:05 PM
> Subject:
> [Blindmath] Facial recognition -- food for thought
> Sent by:
> blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org
>
>
>
> 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/
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-- 
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/