NEC Introduces Facial Recognition on Their Laptops

Fingerprint recognition is the most usual security feature that laptops are offering today. In 2006, Lenovo incorporated a facial recognition system on their laptops that takes a snapshot of the user and digitally maps it so that it will become the laptop's password. Though not a new technology, the Japanese firm NEC is introducing facial recognition on their laptops and claims that their system is more accurate than their competitor's products. NEC calls their new security feature, "NeoFace" which is a combination of eye zone extraction and facial recognition to help identify the user of the laptop.

Originally, the "NeoFace" technology was developed by NEC for security applications like prison management, corporate security or border control so that fingerprint recognition could be eliminated. Just last July, NEC's facial recognition technology was used in an automated border control system in the Hong Kong-Shenzhen border to identify people while inside their cars. The system reads a car's license plate and then compares the driver's face with the registered driver's ID.

NEC is now introducing the "NeoFace" on their LaVie C and Lavie L series of laptops. The program works when a user configures a profile with three photographs of their face. When the user logs-in, the 2 mega pixel camera on the laptop will scan their facial features.

The system then uses a matching method to determine the identity of the person logging-in. According to NEC, "Neoface" can perform accurate matching even when the user wears glasses, hats, had a new haircut or facial hair, or wears a different facial expression. NEC however adds that the ability to distinguish between identical twins is still speculative.

Atsushi Sato, head researcher at NEC explains, "NeoFace uses a technology called 'adaptive region mixed matching,' which focuses on 'segment regions' with a high degree of similarity for matching. Other makers' products make judgments based on a number of combined characteristics, such as the distance between the eyes and the nose, or the nose and the mouth. But this creates a problem, because if even one of these segments is missing, the accuracy drops dramatically."

Sato adds that Neoface divides the input image and the registered image into small segments and focuses only on the segments that are highly similar. According to Sato, this will enable NeoFace to achieve higher authentication accuracy than their competitor's products even if the user's face is hidden by a mask or sunglasses.

According to Kazuyori Miyaoka of NEC's Business Promotion Department, NEC is currently researching other forms of authentication methods like using the shape of the ears, patterns of blood vessels on the back of the hand, a persons' walk, smell, DNA, and even keystroke habits when using a keyboard.

The LaVie C and LaVie L will be available in the Japanese market in September with prices ranging from ¥150,000 to ¥310,000.

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