While facial recognition has been a central subject in science fiction literature and movies for quite a while now, many businesses are already looking for the possible implementations of this technology in a broad spectrum of domains and industries.
As of recently, facial recognition is being merged with augmented reality (AR), which, as a result, has established a new category of apps.
In this article, we’ll take a closer look at the most recent AR-related patents in facial recognition apps.
Let’s dive right in, shall we?
Where is the technology headed?
AR and facial recognition seem to be the next big thing many industries, ranging from law enforcement to medicine and beyond, and it’s no secret that tech giants have been slowly but surely tapping into this technology and filing patents throughout the last ten years.
Medicine
Apple is, undoubtedly, of the most active players in this field. Back in 2015, the company has launched two open-source frameworks that allow researchers to recruit potential subjects and monitor their stats at a distance. This can potentially have a massive effect on the quality and accuracy of medical studies and significantly facilitate data entry.
Based on these open-source frameworks, scientists at Duke University have developed an app called Autism & Beyond. It allows parents and doctors to scan children’s faces to identify potential markers of autism at a very early stage, and with a very high degree of precision.
Other patents in the field aim to assist doctors in attaining alignment during plastic surgery in order to improve the outcome of operation in real-time. The technology is designed to provide doctors with 3D representations of the desired result and provide them with surgical guides while operating their patients.
This, as a result, will considerably increase the percentage of successful surgeries, along with skyrocketing customer satisfaction levels.
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Identity security and law enforcement
The combination of AR and facial recognition is projected to have a significant impact on law enforcement and identity security, especially during customs.
Back in 2017, Magic Leap, a startup that has amassed $2B in funding, has submitted a patent that would allow migration officers to authenticate a person’s identity.
The patent depicts a device that would allow to identify a person’s face and the picture of their face on their ID, analyze them, and identify the similarities between the two, thus allowing them to establish that the two are the same person.
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Cosmetics
ModiFace is one of the first companies that has patented its AR-based app that scanned a person’s face to virtually apply certain beauty products onto their faces.
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The app allows users to achieve a deeper understanding of how certain types of makeup will look on a person’s face and body, which will undoubtedly mark a significant change in the retail of cosmetics.
L’Oreal, one of the biggest cosmetics producers on the planet has seen the potential in this technology, which has motivated them to acquire ModiFace earlier this year.
Retailers will also greatly benefit from this app, as they will have the possibility to collect a wealth of data that will allow them to better understand the buying habits of people with specific facial characteristics.
Social media
Blippar is a company that has made it on quite a few “disruptor lists,” and reasonably so, the organization has been an essential player in the augmented reality arena even before Google Glass was a thing.
Back in 2017, the company released its so-called Public Figures Facial Recognition function, which allowed people to identify “famous” people on the street or on images.
But that’s not all. Blippar has continued to explore this territory and allowed users to create their own accounts on the app. The app was designed to recreate a social media experience using facial recognition and AR.
The app allows its users to scan other people’s faces and see a certain spectrum of data about that person (given that those people have the app installed on their phones as well). As a result, this opens an entirely new dimension (no pun intended) to the social media experience.
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One of the other goals Blippar had was to eliminate the necessity for credit cards or any other transaction methods and make payments using your biometric data that the app will identify using your face.
These ambitious plans, however, have been postponed for a later date. The company has collapsed, due to failing to pull together an emergency funding deal. Yet the startup has recently been saved from total demise.
Potential developments
We’ve already seen some big AR and facial recognition-related patent infringement cases in the last few years, and we will most certainly see more of them in the years to come. Tech giants seem to have a great interest in facial recognition technology, and the number of submitted patents in recent years confirms this suspicion.
Biometry and facial recognition, in general, may become the new norm or a mandatory procedure in receiving your orders or services from any business out there, whether it’s a reliable writing service, a courier service, or food delivery from your local restaurant.
Conclusion
There is no doubt that the combination of these two technologies will yield exciting results in a wide array of fields and industries and act as a disruptor in many of them.
At this point, the critical issue for us as consumers is to continually be on the lookout for potential ethical and technical flaws in the technology that we are about to adopt. At this point, however, we are at the very beginning of this path and are yet to observe the impact it will have on the world we live in.