Gavin Longhurst, Vice President of Business Development for BigWorld Technology, showed me some cool new face detection software, called “Seeing Machines,” yesterday at the Stanford University Metaverse Summit, which I got onto my Qik channel via my cell phone. They are preparing to show this technology off at the Game Developer Conference which is in San Francisco next week. He explains in the video why this is significant. It’s the coolest thing I saw at the summit yesterday.
Scobleizer 
wow ,, it looks really high tech ,, guess technology has actually passed to the 21 century 🙂
can’t wait to see that working if i could off-course
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wow ,, it looks really high tech ,, guess technology has actually passed to the 21 century 🙂
can’t wait to see that working if i could off-course
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Face detection software is scary. I don’t like it at all. It’s too “police state” for my liking. I think the only redeeming value is to assit in locating lost/kidnapped children or prosecuting criminals. Everything else is too spooky.
Britain has become a veritable police state with its cameras and face recognition software. No thanks.
Time machine, please. The 50s are calling…
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Face detection software is scary. I don’t like it at all. It’s too “police state” for my liking. I think the only redeeming value is to assit in locating lost/kidnapped children or prosecuting criminals. Everything else is too spooky.
Britain has become a veritable police state with its cameras and face recognition software. No thanks.
Time machine, please. The 50s are calling…
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did you cry?
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did you cry?
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Wreck, didn’t watch the whole video but I think the “Detection” part of this title is misleading as Gavin refers to it as “Tracking” which makes more sense. The police state technology is typically referred to as “Facial Recognition” where, similar to a finger print, if your picture was in a database it may be Recognized by the system if a connected security camera picked you up. Your face is mapped with biometrics and the technology is able to find you even with glasses or a beard disguise. Two companies were big in this space shortly after 9/11 but the technology back then was about 50% effective and that was in a Controlled environment. Haven’t really followed it over the last several years but “smart surveillance” systems are becoming more and more of a reality. The key is to automate most of this for Homeland Security as cities, like Chicago let’s say, are building London-like camera coverage and can’t possibly watch all the video all the time.
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Wreck, didn’t watch the whole video but I think the “Detection” part of this title is misleading as Gavin refers to it as “Tracking” which makes more sense. The police state technology is typically referred to as “Facial Recognition” where, similar to a finger print, if your picture was in a database it may be Recognized by the system if a connected security camera picked you up. Your face is mapped with biometrics and the technology is able to find you even with glasses or a beard disguise. Two companies were big in this space shortly after 9/11 but the technology back then was about 50% effective and that was in a Controlled environment. Haven’t really followed it over the last several years but “smart surveillance” systems are becoming more and more of a reality. The key is to automate most of this for Homeland Security as cities, like Chicago let’s say, are building London-like camera coverage and can’t possibly watch all the video all the time.
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Kyle,
It’s still scary, even if you have nothing to fear. It’s the thin edge of a wedge towards control.
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Kyle,
It’s still scary, even if you have nothing to fear. It’s the thin edge of a wedge towards control.
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Thay’s a nice photo of paraglider on the computer screen. I think the guy on the scren is one of the Valic brothers world class paragliding comp pilots. I I noticed new cameras like Nikon D3 have face tracking and even human shape tracking features in their software. I wonder how it would work for tracking a paraglider flying across the sky. Face recognition will spread as more consumers businesses beyond Vegas casinos and government agencies get the hardware and software to implement it.
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Thay’s a nice photo of paraglider on the computer screen. I think the guy on the scren is one of the Valic brothers world class paragliding comp pilots. I I noticed new cameras like Nikon D3 have face tracking and even human shape tracking features in their software. I wonder how it would work for tracking a paraglider flying across the sky. Face recognition will spread as more consumers businesses beyond Vegas casinos and government agencies get the hardware and software to implement it.
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So somebody actually bought a Macbook Pro to run Windows XP on it?? 🙂 (see the picture of the screen!)
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So somebody actually bought a Macbook Pro to run Windows XP on it?? 🙂 (see the picture of the screen!)
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You think this is scary ….
This sort of technology is already being used by governments, military and law enforcement worldwide.
The Israelis have been at the forefront of face recognition and biometrics for years only now it is hitting the mainstream .
http://www.ex-sight.com/
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You think this is scary ….
This sort of technology is already being used by governments, military and law enforcement worldwide.
The Israelis have been at the forefront of face recognition and biometrics for years only now it is hitting the mainstream .
http://www.ex-sight.com/
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Image Metrics http://www.image-metrics.com has been doing this for years. They’ve licensed tech for porn detection, facial recognition and have already implemented most of the things Gavin talked about in games. Sony used the tech on a game for the PS2 called SpyToy where kids could log in through a mission impossible face scan with full face recognition not just detection. Screen shot here: http://www.us.playstation.com/PS2/Games/EyeToy_Operation_Spy/OGS/i/screenshots-6.jpg
The avatar driving example on the company home page should show you the state of the art now. I should disclaim I work for Image Metrics.
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Image Metrics http://www.image-metrics.com has been doing this for years. They’ve licensed tech for porn detection, facial recognition and have already implemented most of the things Gavin talked about in games. Sony used the tech on a game for the PS2 called SpyToy where kids could log in through a mission impossible face scan with full face recognition not just detection. Screen shot here: http://www.us.playstation.com/PS2/Games/EyeToy_Operation_Spy/OGS/i/screenshots-6.jpg
The avatar driving example on the company home page should show you the state of the art now. I should disclaim I work for Image Metrics.
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Speaking of facial tracking technology, (and hot on the heels of Cry-Gate), Microsoft Research developed a plugin called Digital Effects for Windows Messenger that could track movement/rotation of your face in 3D, allowing you to wear disguises (glasses, hats, etc.) and apply other effects…kinda cool, not sure if it works in the latest version of Messenger.
http://research.microsoft.com/vc/DigitalEffectDownload.aspx?0sr=a
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Speaking of facial tracking technology, (and hot on the heels of Cry-Gate), Microsoft Research developed a plugin called Digital Effects for Windows Messenger that could track movement/rotation of your face in 3D, allowing you to wear disguises (glasses, hats, etc.) and apply other effects…kinda cool, not sure if it works in the latest version of Messenger.
http://research.microsoft.com/vc/DigitalEffectDownload.aspx?0sr=a
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Well… this stuff is not face recognition, nor is it face detection, it is robust real-time 3D head-pose tracking.
It is unique in the sense that anyone can sit down in front of it and it immediately tracks your face accurately, with low-noise. Think NaturalPoint IR but without the head-gear. It works with any webcam. It can handle fast head-movements, very large rotation angles, occlusion due to sunglasses, beards, rubbing your face with your hand and dark environments.
Unlike the “kinda cool” (read gimicky) web-cam augmented reality stuff released by Logitech, Creative and Microsoft, I can only say that in comparison this tech is a *lot* more solid. It was originally built for driver drowsiness detection where there is obviously zero tolerance for manual setup or tracking failures. See http://www.seeingmachines.com/downloads/dss_demo.wmv
The image-metrics tracking tech is high-quality stuff for facial animation, requiring high-quality video and a significant setup process, so this is comparing apples to oranges. The spytoy stuff is simple face detection and a crude biometric, again a totally different tech.
Just wanted to clear that up.
Check the video on the home-page and also a couple more at http://www.seeingmachines.com/faceAPI-what-is-faceAPI.html
PS: I should also disclaim that I work for Seeing Machines. 🙂
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Well… this stuff is not face recognition, nor is it face detection, it is robust real-time 3D head-pose tracking.
It is unique in the sense that anyone can sit down in front of it and it immediately tracks your face accurately, with low-noise. Think NaturalPoint IR but without the head-gear. It works with any webcam. It can handle fast head-movements, very large rotation angles, occlusion due to sunglasses, beards, rubbing your face with your hand and dark environments.
Unlike the “kinda cool” (read gimicky) web-cam augmented reality stuff released by Logitech, Creative and Microsoft, I can only say that in comparison this tech is a *lot* more solid. It was originally built for driver drowsiness detection where there is obviously zero tolerance for manual setup or tracking failures. See http://www.seeingmachines.com/downloads/dss_demo.wmv
The image-metrics tracking tech is high-quality stuff for facial animation, requiring high-quality video and a significant setup process, so this is comparing apples to oranges. The spytoy stuff is simple face detection and a crude biometric, again a totally different tech.
Just wanted to clear that up.
Check the video on the home-page and also a couple more at http://www.seeingmachines.com/faceAPI-what-is-faceAPI.html
PS: I should also disclaim that I work for Seeing Machines. 🙂
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We've seen amazing results already
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I wonder how this software became significant and what is it for..
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I wonder how this software became significant and what is it for..
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