You only need a ‘selfie’ to enter this tourist destination. The town of Wuzhen in China uses face-recognition technology to identify people staying in its hotels and to act as their entry pass through the gates of the attraction. The system, which processes around 5000 visitors a day, has been created by web giant Baidu- often referred to as the “Chinese Google”.
When a visitor arrives, their photo is taken and uploaded to a database. When he/she attempts to access certain parts of the town or a hotel, a tablet attached to the entry gates records video and sends a few frames to the cloud, where artificial intelligence identifies if the person seeking access is authorized. This happens in 0.6 of a second. The technology is accurate 99.77% of the time and has shortened wait times.
Baidu’s face-recognition software uses neural networks – a technique inspired by neurons in the brain that helps to recognize complex patterns. The company has trained the software on huge data sets that together total more than 1 billion images of people’s faces.
“You always have your face with you,” says Baidu chief scientist Andrew Ng. “Facial recognition has a lot of strengths that other authentication methods don’t.” The software also detects facial movements, so it can’t be fooled by someone holding up a still image of another person‘s face.
Picture Credit : Google
