…for faces behind protective masks
A Chinese company, Hanwang Technology Ltd, said that it has developed the country’s first facial recognition technology capable of identifying people even when wearing protective masks, as most people do recently due to the coronavirus outbreak, and to also help in the fight against the disease.
China uses some of the world’s most sophisticated electronic surveillance systems, including facial recognition.
Due to the coronavirus outbreak, in the Hubei province late last year, almost everyone now wears a surgical mask outdoors to stave off the virus and this has posed a particular problem for surveillance.
Hanwang Technology Ltd, which also bears the English name Hanvon, said it has come up with technology that can successfully recognise people even when they are wearing those surgical masks.
“If connected to a temperature sensor, it can measure body temperature while identifying the person’s name, and then the system would process the result, say if it detects a temperature over 38 degrees,” Hanwang Vice President Huang Lei told Reuters in an interview.
The Beijing-based firm disclosed that a team of 20 staff used technology developed over the past decade, a sample database of about 6 million unmasked faces and a much smaller database of masked faces to develop the technology.
The Ministry of Public Security, which runs the police, uses Hanwang’s technology to cross-reference images with its own database of names and other information and then identify and track people as they move about.
“It can detect crime suspects, terrorists or make reports or warnings,” Huang said.
But the system struggles to identify people with both a mask and sunglasses, he said.
“In this situation, all of the key facial information is lost. In such cases recognition is tough,” Huang said.
The company has about 200 clients in Beijing using the technology including the police, and expect scores more across 20 provinces to start installing it soon, Huang said.
Even though there has been grumbling on social media about the extra intrusion into privacy with these surveillance tools, most people seem to be embracing it as a means to deal with the health emergency.
Huang also says he expects more foreign interest, as the virus spreads around the world and more people wear face masks.
“It not only benefits Chinese people but also when the technology is applied globally, it can benefit the world,” he said.
*Source: Reuters