Apple Working On A New Face Detection System For iOS Devices And Macbooks – US Patent Report
Apple, the technology revolutionary, has innumerous patents to its name at the US Patent Office. Most of us know Apple to be the lead behind technologies like the iPod (which revolutionized music industry and digital music), iPhone (which revolutionized the smartphone world) and the iPad (which revolutionized the tablet world). There are countless other innovations from Apple which are too many to be listed here – and it has all come from their dedication to technological research. The recent knighting of their Senior VP of Design (Jony Ive) is proof enough of their commitment to technological revolution – and advancement. 
A recent US Patent report released shows that Apple has many more tricks up their sleeve. The recently released report which shows detailed sketches of what Apple is doing behind closed doors – regarding face-detection – shows quite a lot of plans that Apple has already made.
Face-detection, as a concept, is nothing new. The problem is, the resources that face detection uses up is quite huge that a revolutionary change – or research – has been stalled for quite sometime. We have smartphones and devices that do face-detection well – but these are very costly and tedious in integration. Also, issues like draining of power resources, draining of the processor resources occasionally mar the entire process of face detection. The technology of face detection that we currently have, faces a lot of problems and is linear (and very simple).
Apple’s patent looks to solve these issues – and bring additional functionality through the technology it proposes to build. We are not getting into the nitty-gritty details of the patent but here are some of the points that we found would be of interest:
- The face detection process that Apple proposes aims to simplify and quicken the whole flow of face-detection. This means, less resources involved and faster recognition and response. Unlike the current technology which matches the face as-is, (and therefore uses up quite a lot of resources), the proposed technology would use a stripped down – but secure enough – imaging.
- The patent looks like the resources used would be out of the graphics processor – which would free-up the CPU of the device considerably. This, in turn, would also affect (or reduce the level of its impact) on stuff like battery, hardware performance, response times etc.
Another interesting facet of the patent was multi-user face-detection. This means, different people can access a same system – much needed on MacBooks and devices like that – and permissions for the system would be opened up based on the person. This is a seemingly new technology proposal and it would change the demographics of user-password system that we presently have.
Via: PatentlyApple