[Blindmath] Facial recognition -- food for thought

Wed Mar 28 15:16:57 UTC 2012

Hello,
Yes the idea sounds interesting, however one thinks what is the reliability 
like? Its one thing for presenting the wrong advert (wrong in the sense its 
not the optimal one rather than totally inappropriate and insulting) and 
drawing conclusions on someone you meet. Admittedly the drawing conclusions 
is done by sighted people, but at least when they get it wrong its their 
fault for jumping to conclusions where as being blamed for poor software 
feels hard.

As the technology in those areas is improving quite fast, may be I just have 
an out dated view of it. Also may be I have a bit of a problem with letting 
computers recognise/decide things for me, particularly in these cases like 
you said where the answer is not deterministic.

May be also I just have a problem with the idea of being weird, wandering 
around with head mounted cameras, it really needs to offer something special 
for me to want to do that. As an example quite a bit of information can be 
obtained about someone through other means, eg. I say "Hello" they say "good 
morning", in that alone quite a bit can be got. By voice I can hear gender 
(in most cases, there are a few who may sound a bit like the other gender), 
I probably could hazard a guess at age (certainly only approximate), I also 
reckon its possible to sometimes pick up if someone is a smoker (although 
smell might give that one away), you can get an idea of size (both height 
and build) and so on.

There's other things like cost (even if software is free there's the 
hardware one has to carry around), concerns of trying to use another sense 
to substitute a lacking one and so loosing the other one (eg. the voice 
feeds visual information through the ears, however this means you will loose 
some of what you would normally hear if not having sound pushed in by the 
voice) and slightly perversely all this technology while seeming to make 
people more independent may make people more isolated (IE. what's wrong with 
a good chat to find out about someone, by prejudging you may not talk to 
someone who may turn out to be interesting, wearing headphones people may 
feel they don't want to disturb you from listening to what you are listening 
to).

Sorry if it sounds negative, its just sometimes we can get swept up by 
things which seem good without thinking is there a need or desire. For me 
there simply is neither.

Michael Whapples

-----Original Message----- 
From: Richard Baldwin
Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2012 3:44 AM
To: BlindMath Mailing List ; seeingwithsound at freelists.org
Subject: [Blindmath] Facial recognition -- food for thought

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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