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Security Graphics Software

3D Face Cameras 189

Posted by CmdrTaco from the i-always-knew-they-were-going-to-steal-my-face dept.
newsblaze writes "Now there is a fast, inexpensive device for simultaneous acquisition of accurate three-dimensional and two-dimensional human faces. It will allow law enforcement and security agencies to capture both types of mug shots in seconds as a single snapshot and provides incredible accuracy in correctly mapping the individual being booked in 3D."
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3D Face Cameras More

3D Face Cameras

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  • Next time I'm arrested... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 14, 2005 @01:35PM (#13065567)
    I'll have to make sure I am bloated... that way they won't be able to identify me when I am not!

  • Maybe it's just me (Score:5, Funny)

    by DanielMarkham ( 765899 ) * on Thursday July 14, 2005 @01:35PM (#13065568) Homepage
    FTA
    "simultaneous acquisition of accurate three-dimensional and two-dimensional human faces."

    Maybe it's just me, but I would think that people with 2-Dimensional faces would be easy to spot. Look! Over there! The guy without the nose!

    Spiderman Joining Microsoft? It's on the web! [whattofix.com]
  • Someone had their face smashed by some pshco robo-cop
  • Lots of ugly thieves getting face lifts and nose jobs.
    • Lots of ugly thieves getting face lifts and nose jobs.

      That should at least be good for the economy! And heck, who wouldn't want to get mugged by a handsome thief with a pretty face and straight nose? Oh and lets not forget to fix those teeth too, and lose about 20 pounds!

  • runs to closet (Score:3, Funny)

    by AtariAmarok ( 451306 ) on Thursday July 14, 2005 @01:36PM (#13065572)
    Reminds me that I really need to wear that Darth Vader mask in public a lot more.
    • Which one of these buttons calls your parents to pick you up?
    • " Reminds me that I really need to wear that Darth Vader mask in public a lot more."

      Actually, I do believe masking in public IS illegal in many places...at least on the lawbooks in the US. The exceptions for Halloween, and Mardi Gras (in NOLA) are two I know of, but, I think I read once that surprisingly, there are old laws on the books making it illegal in general to wear a mask in public.

      • "Actually, I do believe masking in public IS illegal in many places... there are old laws on the books making it illegal in general to wear a mask in public"

        This was left over from a few decades ago when many communities were getting fed up with the Batman. The tights, the youthful 'ward', the batarangs gouging buildings, the constantly speeding Batmobile that never checked in for pollution control certification. It got to be too much.

  • The first and biggest consumer will be... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 14, 2005 @01:36PM (#13065579)
    The industry that always takes the forefront in technological innovation will be all over this one too.

    Yes, I mean porn.

  • Land of the "Free"! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by garcia ( 6573 ) * on Thursday July 14, 2005 @01:38PM (#13065595)
    Mr. Duron adds, "At BlueBear Network, we are dedicated to helping law enforcement keep our neighborhoods safe by providing the best biometric identification and information sharing technology available in a way that is easily deployed, totally integrated to existing systems and affordable for all police services from small detachments to large metropolitan police forces."

    "At RedBear Network, we are dedicated to helping law enforcement keep degrading personal privacy by providing the best and most intrusive biometric identification and database sharing technology available in a way that every government sector can integrate personal data tracking features into existing personal information database creation systems which is affordable for all taxpayers both in rural and metropolitan areas who are getting fucked by this under the guise of added benefit."

    Thanks for continuing to support companies with free advertising on Slashdot by giving them exposure for stealing our rights to privacy.

    Remember, just because you were arrested and your mugshot was taken does not mean that you should be kept in a 3D database linked to every other anti-terrorist database out there, especially if your *alleged* offense occurred with the boundaries of the USA where you used to be innocent until proven guilty.
  • how do you expect me to believe this? but yeah.... perhaps this could be used for further google earth developments.

  • Thats all well and good (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mfloy ( 899187 ) on Thursday July 14, 2005 @01:39PM (#13065609) Homepage
    The real problem with this type of work is when software is used to match mugshots to actual pictures and video. Even leading researchers are still having a very difficult time doing this. I think the government should be focusing more on advancing the work of these researchers than on gathering more data.

  • Um... the end of that press release.... (Score:4, Informative)

    by gardyloo ( 512791 ) on Thursday July 14, 2005 @01:40PM (#13065616)
    ... was full of bullshit. No technical details were given, the release had OK spelling, but poor grammar, and practically everything was advertising-speak. Who wants to bet that this is a good example of vapor-ware?

    This press release contains forward-looking statements as defined in the Securities Litigation Improvements Act of 1996. The words "believe, expect, estimate and project" and similar expressions define forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date the statement was made. BBNI undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether because of new information, future events or otherwise. Forward-looking statements are currently subject to risks and uncertainties, some of which cannot be predicted or quantified. Future events and actual results could differ materially from those set forth in, contemplated in, or underlying the forward-looking statements. The risks and uncertainties to which forward-looking statements are subject include, but are not limited to, the company's ability to meet its projected growth, the effects of government regulation, competition, and other material risks.
    • The end of that press release is a standard clause that every publicly-traded company makes to cover its ass.

      See? [google.com]
    • It's a pretty standard disclaimer. They're afraid of the following scenario:

      1. They issue a press release about a forthcoming product
      2. A bunch of people, figuring they're the first ones to hear about it, buy up the stock
      3. For some reason (good or ill) the product doesn't materialize, or doesn't sell well
      4. The investors sue the bejeezus out of them.

      (Yeah, yeah, I know "... profit". You're such a card.)

      What's the difference between this and vaporware? Arguably nothing, except that "vaporware" implies
      • Oh, good points that both you and the other (so far) poster raise about standard disclaimers. I've never seen that (but have come to expect something like it somewhere) so obvious, though.

        Still, the "article" itself is actually more what made me say the stuff about the vaporware. Besides, they've "acquired" this "new" technology?

        I'm just cynical this morning, apparently.
        • The way I read it, it's not interesting enough to be vaporware. What it does is not particularly novel; it's just new and perhaps more convenient packaging of something law enforcement departments do regularly. Or should be doing regularly.

          It's not a solution of any sort in and of itself. It's one piece of a larger biometric catch-the-bad-guys sort of database.

          So it's probably not vaporware. The press release is so badly written mostly because it's not all that interesting. That is, it's not really b
      • 99.999% of cop shops won't be able to afford it or be able to deploy it.

        Its a solution (maybe) that's looking for a problem. They're hoping somebody out there is stuck looking a crap load of picures and trying to match a face.

        The situation is more complex. To pick a face out of a crowd, you need to scan the crowd and match every face out there against a database full of faces.

        The had part is in being able to pick out the faces, not filling the database.
        • I'm guessing (reading between the lines) that they've made a less-expensive, relatively portable, easy-to-use 3D face camera. That's not the whole biometric problem or even the hardest part, but the idea is to improve the quality of that database.

          The database full of faces we have already is 2D. If you're trying to match a face in a crowd against the database, you'll need to consider every angle, which is easier if you have a 3D picture in the database.

          The crucial piece of the technology then is the one
  • I think this may really have potential for abuse..

    • Abuse? To say the least (Score:5, Funny)

      by AtariAmarok ( 451306 ) on Thursday July 14, 2005 @01:45PM (#13065665)
      "I think this may really have potential for abuse"

      To say the least! The article mentioned "acquisition of accurate three-dimensional and two-dimensional human faces". It did not say photographs or images or any sort of virtual recreation. This thing must rip the face off your skull. That's gotta hurt.

    • Re:Abuse (Score:2, Informative)

      by jellomizer ( 103300 ) *
      Um almost anything can have the potential for abuse...

      Creation of fire, burning your enemy and his property.

      Creation of stone tools, bash your enemy head in without huring your hand.

      Creation of a stone on a stick, hit your enemy without him being able to hit you back.

      Creation of the wheel, able to steel your enemies stuff much more quickly and in one trip.

      Metals, lighter stonger and more repairable then stone allowing more enemies to be smited.

      I think you are staring to get the point. Espectilly the f
    • I think this may really have potential for abuse..

      Like taking a 3d photo of your butt????

      Not only do you get to see the hairs sticking out of your crack, but they're in 3D!!!!!
  • They figured out how to get two-dimensional pictures of a face? Amazing!

  • MIL cam (Score:5, Funny)

    by 0110011001110101 ( 881374 ) on Thursday July 14, 2005 @01:41PM (#13065626) Journal
    Do you suppose this could detect my mother-in-law walking up the steps???

    just in case *ahem* I want to have a nice cup of tea waiting for her.....

  • Hoods are back ! (Score:4, Funny)

    by koh ( 124962 ) on Thursday July 14, 2005 @01:42PM (#13065635) Journal
    From the article :

    Mr. Duron adds, "At BlueBear Network, we are dedicated to helping law enforcement keep our neighborhoods safe by providing the best biometric identification and information sharing technology available in a way that is easily deployed, totally integrated to existing systems and affordable for all police services from small detachments to large metropolitan police forces."

    Yup, I hear you. And how is this device supposed to help identify muggers hiding behind, say, an old-fashioned hood ? You know, like in those '80s movies, where muggers were real muggers and were easily recognized by their black hoods and mean attitude ? (besides, a good hood keeps you warm in winter).

    Though I suppose hooded people may now be sued in the US under the DMCA... "biometric information concealing using a hood -> they must have reverse engineered our devices !!"

  • Why only 2D and 3D? (Score:4, Funny)

    by ash*embers ( 725483 ) * on Thursday July 14, 2005 @01:44PM (#13065648)
    I know a lot of one dimensional people. Would this take pictures of them too?
    • I know a lot of one dimensional people. Would this take pictures of them too?

      Sure! Here's one: ___________________

      (Scary face, isn't it)
    • I know a lot of one dimensional people. Would this take pictures of them too?

      Maybe if you lined them all beside each other you'd have enough to make up one 2D person.... But the moire pattern from the scan lines might ruin the image.

  • Ageism! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by gardyloo ( 512791 ) on Thursday July 14, 2005 @01:44PM (#13065649)
    It's nice to see that their crack team of token racially-diverse employees
    http://www.bbninternational.com/company.html [bbninternational.com] can make sure that everyone who's between the ages of 32 and 36 will be so catalogued.

    • Re:Ageism! (Score:3, Insightful)

      by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) *
      Nice stab, but I think that picture has to come from a stock photography library, probably named diversity-03.jpeg.

      And the guy on the cell phone probably isn't a real salesman. Come to think of it, what the heck does he have to do with that page at all? And what's with the trend towards webpages filled with random shots of models?
  • A pair of cameras could create a stereo image of the mugshot portrait. Depth could be determined by inspection (crossing the eyes), or even computation (assuming lighting conditions are known).

    A projector at each side of the criminal could drop a grid onto the faces from the sides, leaving contours much like a topographical map.

    I guess rather than seeing the technological bumps in the road, I look right through to the question of "Why?" thinking that knowing the length of a nose or sunken-ness of eye
    • I am not an expert, but I have a hard time thinking of any technology that would be worse than trying to interpret stereoscopic pictures. Even the human brain frequently has significant trouble with this, and isn't trying to identify a person by the 3D bumps on his head. If you were going to do it with eyes, you would want more than two eyes, and other configuration improvements, but alternative techniques would seem to greatly reduce the need for such interpretation in the first place by producing an exa
    • sweep a laser line across the persons face recorded by a fairly high res digital camera at an azimuth offset relative to the persons face. Then, you could use some simple software and trig to calculate the 3d position of any of the points on the face using the laser line position in the images from the digicam. Just shut the laser off to get the 3d image.

      I happened to start making this system two days ago...would be funny if that's how the actually did it.
  • the ability to take and view inexpensive 3d pictures has existed since 1838, although I have never seen that tech used for as small and close up a subject as an individual face. you would think someone would have done this earlier. It's certainly trivial to separate two digital cameras by a three or so inches and take simultaneous pics. I guess the 3d mapping part is the tricky bit.

  • you idiot -- this is a paid press release! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    From a down-market PR firm. Do you have any idea of the difference between news and paid publicity?

  • Great... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by fanblade ( 863089 )
    The article says about as much as the summary. It would be nice to know how the 3D aquisition is done!

    I used to work at the computer vision research lab at Notre Dame, and we had a pretty cool device that was used to capture 3-D frontal images of anything (we used it for faces). IIRC, it scanned a horizontal laser line down across the subject and measured reflected light using two sensors, triangulating to compute 3D information. I wonder if this camera uses the same concept? Some drawbacks of the afore-m
  • Anyone have any samples of the images it creates?

  • Hrm (Score:4, Funny)

    by dcarey ( 321183 ) on Thursday July 14, 2005 @01:56PM (#13065774) Homepage
    I wanted to see some pictures. Oh well I guess I'll just take the article for "face" value.

    Ba-dum-bum.

    Thanks, I'll be here all week. Don't forget to tip your servers.

  • Casinos (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Broiler ( 804077 )
    Very cool technology. Casinos will most likely implement something like this first. In Nevada it is state law that if someone has registered as a compulsive gambler the burden is on the casino to keep them out.
    • Why would casinos want to keep compulsive gamblers out? Unless they're also compulsive winners...
    • Even more importantly, if someone is in the Griffin book as a cheater (read: card counter), then there is a big incentive for the casino to keep them out.

  • How long until... (Score:4, Funny)

    by eSims ( 723865 ) on Thursday July 14, 2005 @02:02PM (#13065851) Homepage
    Everyone at some point in their life is "arrested" booked, processed and released in a human version of tag and release?

    With that kind of database the children would be safe! Think of the children!

    • This might also come in handy for forensics. You know, a skeleton found in the ditch.

      Sure, it won't prevent people from being killed, but we can now correctly identify the victims!

  • Or Just Skip the Hardware (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) * on Thursday July 14, 2005 @02:03PM (#13065867) Homepage Journal
    There's at least one company [animetrics.com] with a product that makes a good 3D image from a 2D image. There are applications in security for matching two images taken from different angles - you want to match in 3D, not 2D.

    Sure, it's making up information, but the human head isn't an unknown amorphous blob, there is a certain regularity to it.

    If you have the conditions to use special hardware and photography techniques you might get better 3D, but if this is being aimed at security, that's not a luxury you usually have.

  • Ethics (Score:2, Insightful)

    by tnk1 ( 899206 )
    Some point out that this has potential for abuse, probably related to the fact it's being marketed to police. Well, so does just about every piece of modern technology. It's pretty obvious, though, that while things like master databases and 3D mugshots can be abused by a police state, you also need these improvements to stop increasingly sophisticated criminals.

    You can't stop technology, because people won't stop craving progress. The only way to prevent these tools from making a Better Police State, i
  • I love the bit about being able to simultaneously capture 2D and 3D images. That's so easy, you just get the subject to stand next to a mirror that's tilted at a 45 degree angle. Voila, you have one pic with frontal and profile view, all set for stereographic reconstruction. So what's the big deal? Stereographic Reconstruction has been available for decades. Mirrors have been around for centuries.
  • .... who immediatly thought of the old "Sit on the Photocopier" trick?

    Even better, only now it will be in 3D!

  • FALSE POSITIVE rate? (Score:5, Informative)

    by dpbsmith ( 263124 ) on Thursday July 14, 2005 @02:17PM (#13066012) Homepage
    I've seen half-a-dozen of these press releases by facial-recognition companies and they never say anything about false positives. In fact they rarely provide numbers at all.

    "dramatic improvements in the accuracy and performance for facial recognition," yeah, well, how does "dramatic" translate to percentages?

    The old familiar math... if there is one known terrorist per million people, and if the false positive rate is one in a thousand, then 999 out of 1000 people identified as "terrorists" will be innocent.
    • The old familiar math... if there is one known terrorist per million people, and if the false positive rate is one in a thousand, then 999 out of 1000 people identified as "terrorists" will be innocent.

      Facial recognition doesn't have to be perfect to be useful. You work through a process of elimination, a criminal investigation or the pursuit of a terrorist rarely turns on a single piece of information.

  • "..and provides incredible accuracy in correctly mapping the individual being booked in 3D."

    How do you book someone in 3D?
  • Perhaps this can be used as a cheap 3D capture camera for other objects.

    Right now 3D scanners are rather expensive and out of the range of most hobbyists.
  • I was involved in the Computer Vision field about 5 years ago and this sort of technology was a hot research interest. Theoretically its a very difficult problem acuratly transforming a set of 2D image into a 3D model. There are dificult problems: identifying matching points and computational instability.Lots of very smart maths in the solution.

    Even identifying a face is hard. Its one of those things which is so easy to for humans to do, but computers have really struggled at this. I was using a person tr

  • Does "accurate" mean that the system will correctly identify people with low false positives AND low false negatives commensurate to its expected use? I highly doubt it. Also, how does it deal with the simple problem of people aging, with associated facial changes? No way this is going anywhere.
  • We need a new privacy law that states:

    All personal data gathered about you in the course of an investigation (photos, fingerprints, etc.) needs to be returned to you and purged from the law enforcement's database in the event that you are not charged or if you are tried and found not guilty.

    I know it's highly unlikely, but that doesn't change that fact that it should exist.
  • They couldn't get the 2D-based face recognition to work sufficiently reliably, so they need a special 3D camera.
  • This sentence just made me think "this is the stuff Case and Molly watch late at night after a hard day hacking into improbably glowing mainframes, on the cyberpunk cop shopping channel."

    It [...] provides incredible accuracy in correctly mapping the individual being booked in 3D.
  • I believe I saw in Siggraph 2000 a near realtime algorithm that generates 3D images of a human head by given one side profile. The example they used was actor Tom Hanks and the folks at at the Max Planck Institute had this impressive demo that showed a 45 degree (between front and side) angle shot of the face was the only input data need to generate a full 3D model of the head. It used some parameters of the human head to define what the bounds of the 3D model would be. I can't find the original video, but

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