Gadgets and Gizmos

A Computer Software
That Can Tell Age Just By Looking At Your Face
People who hope to keep their age a secret should stay miles away from the University of Illinois-developed computer software that reveals a person's age just by looking at his or her face. But, unlike age-guessers who look at a person's body, the software works by examining only the person's face."Age-estimation software is useful in applications where you don't need to specifically identify someone, such as a government employee, but would like to know their age," said Thomas S. Huang, the William L. Everitt Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the U. of I.
The age-estimation software was trained on a database containing photos of 1,600 faces, and consists of three modules – face detection, discriminative manifold learning, and multiple linear regressions.It can estimate ages from 1 year to 93 years. It's accuracy ranges from about 50 percent when estimating ages to within 5 years, to more than 80 percent when estimating ages to within 10 years. Huang said that the accuracy can be improved by additional training on larger databases of faces.Apart from performing tasks such as security control and surveillance monitoring, the software also could be used for electronic customer relationship management.For example, a camera snapping photos of customers could collect demographic data – such as how many adult men and women buy burgers, or what percentage of teenagers purchase a particular soft drink.Also, if combined with algorithms that identify a person's sex, age-estimation software could help target specific audiences for specific advertisements. For example, a store display might advertise a new automobile or boat as a man walks by, or new clothing or cosmetics as a woman walks by."All of this can be done without violating anyone's privacy. Our software does not identify specific individuals. It just estimates their ages," said Huang.Estimating someone's age is not an easy task, even for a computer. Because the aging process is determined not only by a person's genetic makeup, but by many other factors as well"Human faces do convey a significant amount of information, however, and provide important visual cues for estimating age. Facial attributes, such as expression, gender and ethnic origin, play a crucial role in our image analysis," said Huang

3 D Virtual Crime Scenes Models

The latest 3D technology has made it possible to decipher a crime scene with out actually being present. The Kiwi researchers have developed a 3D scanner that can create a 'virtual' model of any given area.The computerised 3 D model navigates in a manner that gives the 'real' feel to the experience, the technology is developed by a team lead by Robert Valkenburg of Industrial Research in Auckland, New ZealandThe handy device has a laser scanner combined with a digital camera, that records the scene with supreme accuracy. A 3D model of the scene is created onto which images from the camera are superimposed by the scanner.

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