Facial Recognition to Help Identify the Famous Faces of Art

 

The secret behind Mona Lisa’s smile may soon be cracked, thanks to facial recognition technology.

Professor Conrad Rudolph, a professor of medieval art history at the University of California at Riverside, has won funding to use advanced facial recognition technology to try to solve the mysteries of some of the world's most famous works of art. Rudolph wants to apply cutting-edge forensic science to thousands of portraits and busts where the identity of the subject has been lost.

Rudolph’s team will use facial recognition software on death masks of known individuals and then compare them to busts and portraits. If the software can find a match where Rudolph and his team know one exists, then it shows the technique works and can be used on unknown subjects to see if it can match them up with known identities.

The identity of the subjects of some of the most famous pictures in the world are unknown, including Girl with a Pearl Earring, a 17th-century portrait. The truth behind several paintings of Shakespeare – such as the Chandos portrait and the Cobbe portrait – has also been much disputed. It is possible facial recognition software could help solve these mysteries.

The Guardian tells us how:

To be identified, the subject of a portrait would need to be matched to the identity of another named person in a separate picture. But Rudolph has some tricks up his sleeve. He believes that another forensic technique – whereby an "ageing" programme is run on a subject – could also help solve art mysteries. In fighting crime the software is usually used to produce "adult" pictures of children who have been missing for many years. But it could see if the Girl with a Pearl Earring had been painted again as a much older woman, whose identity might be known.

Away from the high-profile cases there are a legion of other unknown subjects that might be more easily identified. In many works from before the 19th century wealthy patrons often inserted themselves, their families or friends and business associates into crowd scenes.

Facial recognition technology could be used to identify some of these people from already known works and thus provide insight into personal, political and business relationships of the day. In other cases families in wealthy homes commissioned busts of relatives that were often sold when estates went bankrupt or families declined.

Creepy Wall-mounted Robot Tracks Your Movements

G.I.A. (Gestural Interactive Automation) is your new creepy robot friend. Created by Daniel Jay Bertner, the GIA robot sculpture is anchored to a wall and tracks you around the room, using motion tracking software. It also uses facial recognition technology to interact with you and, worse yet, projects a video image of a human face on a sphere that responds with facial expressions.

When you enter GIA’s room, it tracks your movements and appears to be watching and following you from its perch… ready to strike? The projected facial video changes expression based on gestures or reactions it picks up from the audience.

Check out the video to see GIA in action.

University Student Creates Priceless Object-tracking Algorithm that Learns From its Mistakes

Imagine a facial recognition system that learns from its mistakes to continually track objects more precisely. Talk about intelligent search!

The Predator, an object-tracking camera system, can do that and more. Created by a University of Surrey student, Predator zeroes in on an object within a video by filtering out the other visual "noise." It intelligently learns what the object looks like so that it can continue to track the object as it moves or rotates. If the object leaves the screen and returns, Predator remembers and continues to track it. 

The system continually learns more about the objects it tracks, enabling it to match a face to a photograph or even follow your fingers, as it does in the video. 

We can't wait to see where Predator -- and its creator -- goes. 

Microsoft Turns 2-D Photos Into Realistic Talking Heads

A group of researchers at Microsoft is working toward creating more realistic avatars--in essence, computerized "talking heads" that are more human and less creepy than those we've seen in the past. (And, incidentally, much less scary than those talking baby commercials.)

Now, Microsoft is able to paste a 2-D photographic image onto a 3-D mesh model that can be created with Kinect. Then, the desired speech is entered into a text field, and the talking head comes to life. This system reduces the computation needed for photo-realism to be achieved in real-time.

Microsoft researchers envision this photo-real talking head software to become popular in video gaming, speech-to-speech translation and more. The avatars could even be used as computerized talk show hosts on television or a friendly interface for your smartphone that can read email, text messages and news stories. 

A Mustache That Fools Facial Rec? Don't Count on it!

Think you can fool Big Brother by sporting a Sam Elliott-style mustache? Think again!

Alex Kilpatrick, founder of Tactical Information Systems, is offering attendees at the Web 2.0 New York conference a few tips on foiling facial recognition systems, based on his own exhaustive testing. Turns out, a beard, mustache, hat or even hood won't do the trick. Your best bet: Invest in some oversize Paris Hilton-style sunglasses. 

Forbes.com reports: 

Without obscuring his eyes, only drawing a virtual burqa on his face managed to defeat a match, whereas sunglasses immediately prevented all recognition.

“You have to break from the human perception of the face,” Kilpatrick says. “We key on big features like hairstyle and beard, but software works on very different principles.”