Innovatrics Officially Adds Mask Detection to Biometric Platform

Multimodal biometric technology company Innovatrics has announced that it has officially added mask detection to its SmartFace facial recognition solution.

SmartFace can now detect whether an individual is wearing a mask or not, in addition to being able to detect if the mask is being properly worn and ensure that the wearer’s nose is fully covered. The system can also send notifications to the necessary authorities if the person isn’t wearing a mask, as well as deny them entry to premises.

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to both a rise in the use of masks, as well as the use of biometric access control solutions, particularly contactless ones like the facial recognition technology in Innovatrics’ SmartFace. Automated biometric access control can drastically reduce contact between people as well as commonly touched surfaces, which can help mitigate the spread of the virus.

In April of this year, in the early stages of the pandemic, Innovatrics released a statement assuring customers that its facial recognition solutions were still capable of identifying individuals wearing masks with a high degree of accuracy.

“As soon as masks started becoming commonplace we began collecting test data to see how face recognition would be affected,” Innovatrics Solution Manager Metod Rybar said back in April. “We found that even without any changes to the settings, the system is still 95 percent accurate when recognizing a given person in a dataset of hundreds of faces.”

Biometric access control solutions like SmartFace serve as a potentially vital tool as governments around the world look for ways to safely reopen their economies in what is now nearing seven months of COVID-19-related lockdowns in many parts of the world.

Schools, factories, offices, airports, sports venues and government buildings have all made the move to contactless biometrics as a way of screening employees, students and visitors, and ensuring that people can safely return to a more normal semblance of life without putting themselves and others at increased risk of spreading the virus.

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September 11, 2020 – by Tony Bitzionis