IDEMIA Steps Into Face Unlock Market with Infrared Solution

“…IDEMIA emphasized that its 3D Face system is aimed primarily at smartphones, but also offers ‘the potential for future uses: tomorrow, it could be incorporated into vehicle technology, for example, and recognize each car’s owner — or even identify abnormal behavior such as the driver falling asleep at the wheel.'”

Seeking to take advantage of a growing trend, IDEMIA has announced new software aimed at delivering sophisticated facial recognition to mobile devices.

Called IDEMIA 3D Face, the solution does require specialized technology in the form of an infrared camera – a feature not available on many smartphones. But the hardware allows the solution to establish a three-dimensional map of a given user’s face, allowing for a higher level of security than that enabled by 2D selfies.

In that sense, it very much follows in the footsteps of Face ID, the pioneering facial recognition system that Apple introduced to the world in last year’s iPhone X. That system also uses infrared technology to create 3D maps of users’ faces, and its introduction prompted an industry-wide shift toward biometric security based on facial recognition as consumers began getting comfortable with the idea of unlocking their phones just by looking at them, though many of the solutions that have emerged in Face ID’s wake have been 2D.

In its announcement, IDEMIA emphasized that its 3D Face system is aimed primarily at smartphones, but also offers “the potential for future uses: tomorrow, it could be incorporated into vehicle technology, for example, and recognize each car’s owner — or even identify abnormal behavior such as the driver falling asleep at the wheel.”

IDEMIA’s news comes in the wake of an announcement from Himax, MediaTek, and Megvii that those China-based firms would work together to develop 3D facial recognition technology for Android smartphones based on ‘Active Stereo Camera’ 3D imaging; and soon after a report from Juniper Research predicting the rise of hardware-agnostic facial recognition systems for mobile devices.

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September 10, 2018 – by Alex Perala