Ratchet Up

Comparing iPhoto and Google Face Recognition

Face recognition starts with face detection. The face is then rotated so that the eyes are level and scaled to a uniform size. Next, one of three different technical approaches kicks in. Each of these approaches is, of course, covered by its own set of patents and bundled into various vendor offerings. One approach transforms the face into a mathematical template that can be stored and searched; a second uses the entire face as a template and performs image matching. And a third approach attempts to create a 3-D model based on the face, and then performs some kind of geometric matching. Based on our experience with the software, we believe that Apple's system is using a landmarks approach, while the Google system is doing some kind of image matching. But we could be wrong. Neither company has publicized which algorithms it is using. [...]

Overall, iPhoto does a surprisingly good job finding a bunch of photos of the person you've selected and "named." But in the process, it finds photos of other people as well. So your next task is to tell iPhoto which photos it got right and which are wrong. iPhoto uses this information to update its mathematical models. It then looks back through your photo library for other photos of the same person. If it can't find any, you can manually point one out to give iPhoto another starting point; it will then seek out more. You can also click on a photo and ask iPhoto to try to figure out who is in the picture; if you confirm iPhoto's guess, the model gets better still. [...]

Google's Picasa technology is far creepier. Instead of starting with a photo of someone you know and searching for all the similar matches, Google takes every photo that you've uploaded to Picasa, searches them all for faces, then "clusters"these faces into groups of, supposedly, the same people. You then go through each group and tell Google who a person is--including his or her full name, nickname, and e-mail address. [...]

But what's really unsettling about Google's service is that it doesn't just stop at your friends. Before you know it, Google is asking you to identify all those other faces in your photographs--the people standing in the background, the faces in the crowds, even the faces on posters. This is certainly keeping with Google's corporate mission "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." But is that what we really want from a photo-sharing website?" [Technology Review]

180—Degree Surveillance Cam

To cover a 180° field of view, most surveillance cameras either swivel on remote-­controlled mounts, which means they can miss suspicious activity, or use fish-eye lenses, which can introduce distortions. A new camera stitches images from five inexpensive, fixed sensors--the same kind used in camera phones--into a single, undistorted 180° picture. The Ethernet-connected device is the size of a light switch and transmits video at 15 frames per second, along with a seven-megapixel still image every second or two. [Source]

Flexi-cam For Home Hunting

Milwaukee may have designed it to help home inspectors spot hidden mold or shoddy repairs, but the M-Spector is just too much fun to leave to the pros. Did your 5-year-old really drop your diamond ring down the sink — or pawn it for Fruit Roll-Ups? Want to find out the easy way how many bananas your "hilarious" brother-in-law stuffed in your tailpipe? Grab the M-Spector, thumb the power button, and the 2.5-inch screen lights up with 320x240-pixel color video, transmitted from the tiny CMOS camera on the end of its flexible neck. A camera-mounted LED illuminates dark and dismal places, letting you see anywhere you can cram the 3-foot-long cable. Sure, cops could use the M-Spector to peer around corners or ferret out shanks in prison cells, but it's equally effective at locating the perfectly good grape that rolled under your fridge. Just don't get too creative; you'll probably want to draw the line at home colonoscopies. [Source]

My Eye Is A Camera

Rob Spence looks you straight in the eye when he talks. So it's a little unnerving to imagine that soon one of his hazel-green eyes will have a tiny wireless video camera in it that records your every move.

The eye he's considering replacing is not a working one -- it's a prosthetic eye he's worn for several years. Spence, a 36-year-old Canadian filmmaker, is not content with having one blind eye. He wants a wireless video camera inside his prosthetic, giving him the ability to make movies wherever he is, all the time, just by looking around.

"If you lose your eye and have a hole in your head, then why not stick a camera in there?" he asks.

Spence, who calls himself the "eyeborg guy," will not be restoring his vision. The camera won't connect to his brain. What it will do is allow him to be a bionic man where technology fuses with the human body to become inseparable. In effect, he will become a "little brother," someone who's watching and recording every move of those in his field of vision.

If successful, Spence will become one of a growing number of lifecasters. From early webcam pioneer Jennifer Kaye Ringley, who created JenniCam, to Microsoft researcher Gordon Bell, to commercial lifecasting ventures Ustream.tv and Justin.tv, many people use video and internet technology to record and broadcast every moment of their waking lives. But Spence is taking lifecasting a step further, with a bionic eye camera that is actually embedded in his body. [...]

Spence lost his right eye at 13 while playing with his grandfather's gun on a visit to Ireland. "I wanted to shoot a pile of cowshit," he says. "I wasn't holding the gun properly and it backfired, causing a lot of trauma to the eye." [...]

Even in the age of miniaturization, getting a wireless video camera into a prosthetic eye isn't easy. The shape of the prosthetic is the biggest limitation: In Spence's case, it's 9-mm thick, 30-mm long and 28-mm high.

While that might seem like plenty of room in an age when digital cameras are squeezed into unimaginably slim and compact phones, it actually isn't. The average area available inside a prosthetic eye for an imaging sensor is only about 8 square mm, explains Phil Bowen, an ocularist who is working with Spence. Also, a digital camera has many more components than the visible lens and the sensor behind it, including the power supply and image-processing circuitry. Getting a completely self-contained camera module to fit into the tiny hollow of a prosthetic eye is a significant engineering challenge. [...]

Then there's the question of how the prosthetic eyeball (the outer shell for the camera) will be made. The eyeball chassis has to close shut and be watertight.

Traditional prosthetic eyes are single pieces made with polymethyl-methacrylate (PMMA), a flexible polymer that is also used in dentures. To fit a camera in, Bowen redesigned the prosthetic eye into two pieces that could snap shut.

But with a camera inside there's something new to worry about. The modified prosthetic eye will be heavier than traditional ones and that could affect the eye socket, says Bowen. "The weight might stretch out the lower lid," he says, potentially disfiguring the face.

Assuming the size, weight and water-tightness issues can be solved, Spence has a vague idea of how he thinks it can work. A camera module will have to be connected to a transmitter inside the prosthetic eye that can broadcast the captured video footage. To boost the signal, he says he can wear another transmitter on his belt. A receiver attached to a hard drive in a backpack could capture that information and then send it to another device that uploads everything to a web site in real time. [...]

Spence is not the only one attempting to implant a video camera in his eye socket -- artist Tanya Vlach is working on a similar project -- but if he's successful he will be more than just another cyborg. The documentary film he's making about his efforts, plus the experience of living with a video camera in his eye, could help build greater awareness about the culture of surveillance in our society today, he says.

"No one is going to ban surveillance cameras," says Spence. "It's more about being aware of it. It's about giving a shit in the first place." [Wired] [Thanks Brian Alexander]