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The US government has periodically undertaken
these tests, that aim to determine the capabilities of the major
face recognition engines, that are currently commercially
available. A facial biometric ‘engine’, is basically the
driving force behind any face recognition software – ie it
provides the technology that enables electronic comparisons and
matches to be made between faces.
Until the year 2000, facial recognition was
still at a comparatively early stage in its development, and the
tests did not really focus on actual commercial systems until this
time. By 2002 however, interest in biometrics in general, and
particularly facial recognition, had grown significantly and so
the 2002 tests provided a major insight into this rapidly
developing industry. These latest set of tests aimed to measure
‘the capability of face recognition systems to meet requirements
for large-scale real world applications.’
Where does Aurora’s face recognition
software fit in with these tests?
Aurora made the deliberate decision in their
early days not to become an ‘engine maker’, but instead to
rely upon the best available engines, from which to develop our
products. The way our software is designed means that should a
more effective engine become available, we can easily change from
our existing engine, to a new one, without too much difficulty.
Indeed, we migrated from an earlier product to Visionics in 2000.
The vendor tests, therefore hold great
significance to Aurora, as we basically ‘embed’ the biometric
engine into our whole range of software products. We currently use
the biometric development tools from Identix Corporation in the
States, and have done since 2000, when we learnt that this was
clearly more effective than any other on the market. However, due
to rapid developments in the industry in the last few years, we
were keen to find out what the latest tests showed.
Face recognition engines from ten commercial
firms were tested, using a variety of comprehensive tests. Aurora
were delighted to learn that out of these ten engines, Identix was
one of three that consistently performed considerably better than
the rest, across the whole range of assessments.
Aurora are delighted to continue partnering
Identix in the UK, and using their biometric tools to develop the
‘FaceRec’ product range even further.
For further information about the FRVT tests,
and to see the full report in detail, visit www.frvt.org.
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