Just like our fingerprints, our faces are also unique. You cannot find any other person who looks exactly like you or has the same fingerprints. These two peculiarities have been used by scientists, and also many other authorities to distinguish people from each other. These biometrics are used in many different government identifications. The mobile application developers are also not lagging behind to use these technologies.
The fingerprint technology has become already popular and many people are used to fingerprint sensors. The facial recognition technology is still a new trend which hasn’t got huge popularity till now. Hence, in this article, we are going to explain to you why you must invest in this technology and use it in your next mobile application development project. You can make your app unique from others by implementing facial recognition technology and it will bring many benefits to you and your application.
How does facial recognition technology works?
Firstly, don’t get confused about facial recognition with the Apple Face ID. These are two different aspects. And you must also know that facial recognition technology was first implemented in Android apps, not iOS mobile applications. It simply implies that you have to use different tools for adding Facial recognition technology features into Android & iOS applications but they will give you equal success.
Facial Technology Introduction
The main goal of facial technology is to recognize the faces of people. The camera of your check the multiple features of a person’s face. You will not believe that there are nearly 80 metrics that a program track, store in the database, and memorize for comparing them with a face when it would be required. This program or a facial recognition software will measure the structure or metrics of the face such as distance between eyes, size of the nose, mouth position, the width of nostrils, etc. These are called faceprints which are stored in memory.
There are 4 major steps in the working of Facial recognition:
1. Capture: The program will capture the face of a person by the camera.
2. Extraction: After capturing the face, it will extract the data required from the image.
3. Comparison: In this stage, the program will compare the extracted data pattern with the already stored data.
4. Matching: This is the final stage, in which the machine will decide if the data got matched or not.
It is a very promising technology and hence gaining a lot of support from mobile experts. We also have some of the best examples of facial recognition technology.
Facial Recognition Software
Facelock
FaceLock is a very popular facial recognition software for Android mobile app development. Face recognition is required in security and FaceLock was one of the very few apps that start using it. The main concern is to project apps, files, and other documents by a lock that can be unlocked by only your face. FaceLock comes with a very intuitive interface that you can customize as per your requirements. It is available for both free and paid versions.
FindFace
This is another Android facial recognition app. You can use this app to upload a stranger’s photo and find him on a social media platform. It initially may seem for fun but that doesn’t imply that it works with normal accuracy. The developers have implemented AI in this app which gives them 95% accuracy and lets them check 250 million faces in less than a second. They have also released a cross-platform for developing both cross-platform and mobile apps.
Luxand Face Recognition
This is built for iOS mobile applications and is used for identifying people. You just need to tap on a face in a picture and give it a name. The software will recognize it and then identify people based on this data. It not highly appreciated by the developers as it comes with very poor functionality but they will get an SDK to use in other projects.
Face2Gene
You can’t find this app in usual app stores as it is a medical face detection app. The developers of this app say that it can identify genetic disorders. The working of this is that it will compare a person’s photo with many different images of people having syndromes and check for similarities.
Facial Metrics Analysis Pro
The focus of this app is to entertain users. It is an awesome example of Android face recognition. If people often tell you that you look familiar to them, you should try Facial Metrics Analysis Pro. The app analyses your facial metrics and shows a celebrity you most resemble.
Facial Recognition Technology Stats
The global facial recognition market size is expected to grow from USD 3.8 billion in 2020 to USD 4.5 billion by 2021, at a CAGR of 17.1 during the forecast period. Based on the analysis of different scenarios, the optimistic scenario indicated that the market will grow to USD 5.0 billion at a CAGR of 24.5% by 2021, whereas according to the pessimistic scenario, the market will grow to USD 4.2 billion at a CAGR of 13.5%.
Benefits & Demerits of Facial Recognition in a Mobile Application:
Before you start planning to implement or avoid facial recognition, let’s know its benefits & demerits:
Benefits:
For common users, this feature may seem irrelevant. But if you are developing an app for a company or an organization to identify employees in a crowded place, it would be a distinguishing factor. And contactless technology works faster. Also, it gives zero chances of contamination. With the COVID-19 crisis, people are taking extra cautions to avoid physical contact directly or indirectly. Facial recognition is a healthier alternative than other technology such as Fingerprint.
2. Speed:
Facial technology is not developed today, but a few years ago. It has gone through a lot of advancements and updates. So it is very fast and efficient. It has also got combined with an Artificial Intelligence system.
3. Security:
It is not only concerned with the privacy of the users. This technolgoy should be able to use in crowded places such as stadiums, hospitals, railway stations, etc. It would be able to distinguish between staff and visitors who have come into an unauthorized zone without permission. Such a security system can improve the security level in big warehouses with huge staff and valuable goods.
4. Automation:
Automation Software Technology Process System Business concept.
Manual recognition tends to errors. But if you are using face recognition technology then it will help you save a lot of money. Also, at some places, there is a huge risk of security guard lives, while face recognition system can work 24 x 7 tirelessly.
5. High Accuracy:
When you hire a human you should know that the error rate wouldn’t be very low. People get bored with the same job and frustrated as well. This impacts the attention of the worker. And ultimately end up making mistakes. But a face recognition app can work 24 x 7 tirelessly. The technology as well as cameras are also evolving which will result in better accuracy.
After all these benefits, there are some demerits too that we should also check.
Demerits:
1. Processing Difficulties:
If the software is working 24 x 7 then it will require a lot of space to store data and capacity to process. The video must be of very high quality to process data and recognize faces. You will need large spaces to store video data. All these factors increase the total cost of such a project and require large investments.
2. Hair Problems:
One of the major problems of facial recognition technology is to identify people with or without a beard or mustaches. If a person is keeping a beard all the time then there would be no issue but if shave his beard, then the system wouldn’t be able to identify him.
3. Angle Problems:
If a person directly looks into the camera then there would be 99% accuracy (it also require good lightning and right face position). Now if the face is turned, the lights are not proper, there are facial hair, etc. then these factors will reduce the accuracy.
There are many reputed companies that have released their SDK which you can use for implementing facial recognition technology in your app. However, we are going to talk about more popular solutions.
1. Microsoft Azure provides you with an API that you can use for your program. There would be many advantageous features in the tool such as:
- Face Detection
- Face Recognition
- Emotion Recognition
- Age Detection
- Gender Detection
- Multi-face tracking
and much more. The only disadvantage is that it can work with images and not videos.
2. OpenCV is an open-source library for image processing. Using this library, it is possible to detect faces in an image, process video, and track multiple faces. It also provides you with an SDK. But it is also having some disadvantages like it doesn’t come with many exciting features that we mentioned above.
3. Amazon gives you an API that you can use for detecting faces, recognizing faces on the images. Define the age or gender of a person. But there is no SDK for the developers.
4. Find Face is a cloud API which the developers can use for image processing. It also can detect faces, verify it (compare faces on several images), identify a face, define age, gender, and emotions.
5. Kairos, last but not least, comes with both SDK and API for developers. You can use this software solution for detecting faces, work both with images and videos, and many other exciting features.
Wrapping Up:
Face Recognition Unlock can be the next trending in mobile applications. Hence, if you are looking for an app development implementing this technology could be highly profitable for you. At Amplework, one of the best mobile application development companies, we are having expertise in developing iOS and Android mobile apps with custom requirements.
