'Nobody intended to bother before, but now there are vendors who knock on my door,' said George Brostoff, founder and CEO of Sensible Vision, in an interview with Tencent Technologies on the 22nd.
With Apple's latest generation iPhone face recognition Face ID instead of the previous fingerprint identification unlock, so that this is not a new technology to arouse people's attention, the application of this technology Apple also let other handset manufacturers smell, which is to engage in Face recognition technology companies have brought new opportunities.
Sensible Vision is one such company focused on the development of face recognition software, was founded in 2005, after Sensible Vision more for PC makers, their products have been widely used in Intel, Dell, Sony, Logitech and other companies Products, and today, as Apple iPhone X brings face recognition back to the public, the company sees a new opportunity to develop handset makers.
In fact, a market consulting firm predicts that in the next three to five years, facial recognition will become the unlocking method of more than half of the devices, this method also includes the use of online banking and payment, etc. Another data Pointed out that Face ID facial recognition security system market will rise from 33.5 billion in 2016 to 68.4 billion in 2021.
Data can support Apple's significant impact on industry trends. Since the introduction of fingerprint recognition by Apple's iPhone in 2013, shipments of fingerprinting-related chips have soared from less than 250 million in 2013 to nearly 10 in 2017 Billion-level.
Recently, Brostoff traveled frequently to and from Silicon Valley and Shenzhen to meet with a large number of handset manufacturers. He mentioned Huawei, ZTE, etc. However, given the confidentiality clause, Brostoff can not disclose more about the details of the meeting. However, many large Chinese Cell phone makers have shown a strong interest in face recognition technology and many of the vendors he touches have made it clear that they will introduce the technology in the latest flagship models in 2018 or 2019.
Although Apple completely replaces the previously used fingerprinting by introducing the Face ID, a completely new way to unlock iPhoneX, it has been a subject of considerable controversy since it was introduced, including the fact that unlocking is not easy and there are still security vulnerabilities.
He pointed out that Apple's iPhone X Face ID, although it is the first smart phone to introduce face recognition technology, but there are many obvious shortcomings, these defects mainly reflected in the end user experience .First Face ID can only be for one person Use, and can not be used by many people. In addition, Face ID does not have the function of continuously detecting the face, that is, once unlocked, the user can not relock in real time after changing to another person.
George Brostoff, founder of Sensible Vision, demonstrates the 3D Verify feature using Samsung smartphones with infrared emitters and cameras
Brostoff said that 3D Verify developed by his company can solve the above mentioned problems quickly and accurately, including registering multiple face accounts on the same mobile phone, facilitating the use of multiple people, After unlocking, the user's face is monitored in real time, and the lock is automatically locked out if the registration information is not up to date. The company also obtained the corresponding patent for the continuous facial detection technology.
3D Verify also uses infrared transmitter and camera combination of technical programs, through the infrared transmitter emits light to the human face, the light back again to test the time of light shuttle to obtain the face distance data.This way has no environmental light High requirements, even in completely dark environments, do not affect the accuracy of the recognition.
During the demonstration, several times the successful unlocking is fast, but several times failed to identify successfully and the recognition accuracy still needs to be improved
When Brostoff demonstrated 3D Verify to Tencent in a conference room, it can be used by simply registering the face. The whole process takes about half a minute. In terms of recognition accuracy, in a total of 10 unlock tests, About 2-3 failed to unlock, the rest are unlocked in about half a second time.
In terms of security, Apple's Face ID encountered no small challenge, not long ago, a short time-frequency to unlock the iPhone X through face masks widely circulated on the network, but also caused the Apple Face ID technology security In this regard, Brostoff told Tencent Technologies, face recognition in fact, need to be verified simultaneously in many ways to achieve the purpose of security.He said that at present do not understand the Apple Face ID specific identification Which link there is a security vulnerability.
In order to avoid potential safety problems, 3D Verify uses several methods to perform face verification at the same time, including the face distance, the actual size of the face, whether it is a three-dimensional image, and the flood feature of human skin. Brostoff said Ordinary face masks can not unlock 3D Verify because they do not have face features.
In the interview, Brostoff also mentioned that in addition to face recognition can be fully unlocked in the process of unlocking the phone lock screen process, in fact, can also be more widely applied to the phone application-specific level, for example, you can set the phone Can only be opened when the recognition of your personal face is completed, while others who temporarily use your mobile phone will not be able to open the photo application. In addition, face recognition can also be applied to payment transfer, account login, etc. In the application that requires two-stage security verification steps, face recognition can be used to simplify the original two-stage verification (password + phone verification code) into one-stage verification. That is, when recognizing a face, inputting a password or a specific symbol, Face data and input data match and exactly match the situation can be unlocked, which will greatly improve efficiency, but also did not make any compromise on security.
Currently, Sensible Vision's team of just 13 employees, mainly software-side development work, Brostoff said their previous cooperation with manufacturers take the model of technology licensing, the future may continue to consider using this cooperation.
He also believes that although the technology is currently only used in high-end flagship smartphones, as technology continues to mature, it will soon be seen that more and more low-end models will also include this technology.