[Blindmath] Facial recognition -- food for thought

Wed Mar 28 16:30:47 UTC 2012

Excellent point Michael.

Austin Texas where I live is reasonably well known in some quarters by the
"South by Southwest" event that happens here every spring. Spotting someone
wearing a T-shirt with a SXSW logo might be a good conversation starter.

Still another reason why blind technical people should be interested in the
mathematical algorithms used to process images.

Dick Baldwin

On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 11:14 AM, Michael Whapples <mwhapples at aim.com>wrote:

> Oh, a slighttly different slant on this, may be not recognise the face or
> other attribute/property of the person themself but things the person has
> which may give a clue as to some starting points for conversations.
>
> An example might be to recognise what the person is wearing,. If someone
> into shooting saw me with my Steyr T-shirt on they would recognise that I
> am into shooting and would know its either air rifle or air pistol I
> probably do and that it is likely that at least one of what I shoot with is
> made by Steyr. If their into shooting then there's a starting point. Trying
> to obtain that through other properties of me (eg. my voice) would be very
> hard to do (if at all possible). As an example of how hard it might be to
> guess, here is an example: My Steyr air rifle collapses down and goes into
> a shorter than normal rifle case (although I think the case was designed
> with rifles in mind, people use it for other purposes, eg. I bought the
> case from a computer supplier), when I am travelling with it people tend to
> ask me what's in the big protective box (suggesting musical instruments),
> people just don't expect a blind person to be transporting an air rifle.
>
> Michael Whapples
>
> -----Original Message----- From: Michael Whapples
> Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2012 4:54 PM
>
> To: Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics
> Subject: Re: [Blindmath] Facial recognition -- food for thought
>
> Good point about the cameras becoming more descrete, not sure I would go
> with the ear piece one, mentally I think of it being that when the ear
> piece
> is on then one is listening to something through it and that is how others
> will view it and so we head to the isolation thing.
>
> May be I could be convinced on a lapel pen camera, particularly if it were
> wireless.
>
> Although the camera in the eye glasses frame is nearly invisible, I may be
> have a mental block on wanting those as earlier ones were very obvious and
> may be still are (eg. needing a bulkier frame for batteries if wireless or
> having a trailing cable if wired).
>
> Michael Whapples
>
> -----Original Message----- From: Richard Baldwin
> Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2012 4:33 PM
> To: Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics ;
> seeingwithsound at freelists.org
> Subject: Re: [Blindmath] Facial recognition -- food for thought
>
> Hi Michael,
>
> Those are all good points and I respect them all. I will respond only to
> the one involving walking around with a camera on your head.
>
> These days there are many sighted people walking around who appear to be
> talking to themselves. Actually, they are talking to someone on a cellphone
> using a bluetooth earpiece.
>
> The other day I saw an advertisement for such an earpiece that had a tiny
> video camera built in. Wearing that, you would look just like all of the
> other weird people walking around talking to themselves.
>
> Tiny video cameras are also available in a number of other formats
> including lapel pens, etc. Also, the camera that is built into the eyeglass
> frames is nearly invisible.
>
> Dick Baldwin
>
> On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 10:16 AM, Michael Whapples <mwhapples at aim.com
> >wrote:
>
>  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/ <http://www.seeingwithsound.**com/ <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
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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/ <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/