Facial Recognition Upgrade Improves Robot’s People Skills

The Pepper robot is getting smarter thanks to upgrades to Ever AI’s artificial intelligence platform.

The AI specialist has announced that it has enhanced its flagship offering with some new capabilities, the most crucial of which being perhaps liveness detection. The system can now distinguish between live faces presented in front of it and 2D spoofing attempts, with Ever AI claiming to be the only US-based facial recognition company to offer such technology.

The platform also now supports advanced demographic analysis of the faces it encounters, assessing things like age, gender, and ethnicity; and Ever AI says it can now detect emotions including happiness, sadness, surprise, and anger.

That could lead to considerably improved people skills for Pepper, the SoftBank Robotics-developed humanoid robot designed to serve customers at Pizza Hut, among other things. Commenting on the upgraded AI in a statement, SoftBank Robotics America Head of Studio Omar Abdelwahed said the “introduction of liveness detection, along with additional face attributes, are likely to deliver real improvements to Pepper’s performance.” Abdelwahed also said the enhancements open the way for “more personalized experiences for our retail and hospitality customers.”

Ever AI’s announcement comes on the same day that the company’s CEO, Doug Aley, participates in a panel discussion at the tech-focused Collision Conference entitled “Facing up to advanced robotic capabilities”.

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May 2, 2018 – by Alex Perala