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3D Face Cameras
newsblaze writes "Now there is a fast, inexpensive device for simultaneous acquisition of accurate three-dimensional and two-dimensional human faces. It will allow law enforcement and security agencies to capture both types of mug shots in seconds as a single snapshot and provides incredible accuracy in correctly mapping the individual being booked in 3D."
I'll have to make sure I am bloated... that way they won't be able to identify me when I am not!
Maybe it's just me, but I would think that people with 2-Dimensional faces would be easy to spot. Look! Over there! The guy without the nose!
Spiderman Joining Microsoft? It's on the web!
Someone had their face smashed by some pshco robo-cop
San Francisco Photographers
Lots of ugly thieves getting face lifts and nose jobs.
Peace out, homies.
Reminds me that I really need to wear that Darth Vader mask in public a lot more.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
The industry that always takes the forefront in technological innovation will be all over this one too.
Yes, I mean porn.
It looks like you were almost trying to spell photoshop. That happens too.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Mr. Duron adds, "At BlueBear Network, we are dedicated to helping law enforcement keep our neighborhoods safe by providing the best biometric identification and information sharing technology available in a way that is easily deployed, totally integrated to existing systems and affordable for all police services from small detachments to large metropolitan police forces."
"At RedBear Network, we are dedicated to helping law enforcement keep degrading personal privacy by providing the best and most intrusive biometric identification and database sharing technology available in a way that every government sector can integrate personal data tracking features into existing personal information database creation systems which is affordable for all taxpayers both in rural and metropolitan areas who are getting fucked by this under the guise of added benefit."
Thanks for continuing to support companies with free advertising on Slashdot by giving them exposure for stealing our rights to privacy.
Remember, just because you were arrested and your mugshot was taken does not mean that you should be kept in a 3D database linked to every other anti-terrorist database out there, especially if your *alleged* offense occurred with the boundaries of the USA where you used to be innocent until proven guilty.
our totalitarian 3d camera overlords.
Look sally! Look at zonk die; die zonk die!
how do you expect me to believe this? but yeah.... perhaps this could be used for further google earth developments.
CONTACT: BlueBear Network International, Inc. Andrew Brewin, President and CEO (613)599-7766, ext. 25 abrewin@bbninternational.com
The real problem with this type of work is when software is used to match mugshots to actual pictures and video. Even leading researchers are still having a very difficult time doing this. I think the government should be focusing more on advancing the work of these researchers than on gathering more data.
Voice your opinion!
Look up the two Isreali twins and their work in this.
My work here is dung.
... was full of bullshit. No technical details were given, the release had OK spelling, but poor grammar, and practically everything was advertising-speak. Who wants to bet that this is a good example of vapor-ware?
This press release contains forward-looking statements as defined in the Securities Litigation Improvements Act of 1996. The words "believe, expect, estimate and project" and similar expressions define forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date the statement was made. BBNI undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether because of new information, future events or otherwise. Forward-looking statements are currently subject to risks and uncertainties, some of which cannot be predicted or quantified. Future events and actual results could differ materially from those set forth in, contemplated in, or underlying the forward-looking statements. The risks and uncertainties to which forward-looking statements are subject include, but are not limited to, the company's ability to meet its projected growth, the effects of government regulation, competition, and other material risks.
I think this may really have potential for abuse..
They figured out how to get two-dimensional pictures of a face? Amazing!
My website
just in case *ahem* I want to have a nice cup of tea waiting for her.....
Don't anthropomorphize computers: they hate that.
Why the hell do people invent this stuff?
:(
Are there some people completely devoid of privacy concerns? Or are they just greedy to make money?
Sometimes privacy for everyone is more important than lining your wallet.
From the article :
Mr. Duron adds, "At BlueBear Network, we are dedicated to helping law enforcement keep our neighborhoods safe by providing the best biometric identification and information sharing technology available in a way that is easily deployed, totally integrated to existing systems and affordable for all police services from small detachments to large metropolitan police forces."
Yup, I hear you. And how is this device supposed to help identify muggers hiding behind, say, an old-fashioned hood ? You know, like in those '80s movies, where muggers were real muggers and were easily recognized by their black hoods and mean attitude ? (besides, a good hood keeps you warm in winter).
Though I suppose hooded people may now be sued in the US under the DMCA... "biometric information concealing using a hood -> they must have reverse engineered our devices !!"
Karma cannot be described by words alone.
I know a lot of one dimensional people. Would this take pictures of them too?
It's nice to see that their crack team of token racially-diverse employees
http://www.bbninternational.com/company.html can make sure that everyone who's between the ages of 32 and 36 will be so catalogued.
To say the least! The article mentioned "acquisition of accurate three-dimensional and two-dimensional human faces". It did not say photographs or images or any sort of virtual recreation. This thing must rip the face off your skull. That's gotta hurt.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
A pair of cameras could create a stereo image of the mugshot portrait. Depth could be determined by inspection (crossing the eyes), or even computation (assuming lighting conditions are known).
A projector at each side of the criminal could drop a grid onto the faces from the sides, leaving contours much like a topographical map.
I guess rather than seeing the technological bumps in the road, I look right through to the question of "Why?" thinking that knowing the length of a nose or sunken-ness of eyes will not be necessary evidence to re-capture repeat offenders.
I'll be your candy shop of infinite deliciousity if you'll be my discotheque of endless rump-shaking.
the ability to take and view inexpensive 3d pictures has existed since 1838, although I have never seen that tech used for as small and close up a subject as an individual face. you would think someone would have done this earlier. It's certainly trivial to separate two digital cameras by a three or so inches and take simultaneous pics. I guess the 3d mapping part is the tricky bit.
From a down-market PR firm. Do you have any idea of the difference between news and paid publicity?
The article says about as much as the summary. It would be nice to know how the 3D aquisition is done!
I used to work at the computer vision research lab at Notre Dame, and we had a pretty cool device that was used to capture 3-D frontal images of anything (we used it for faces). IIRC, it scanned a horizontal laser line down across the subject and measured reflected light using two sensors, triangulating to compute 3D information. I wonder if this camera uses the same concept? Some drawbacks of the afore-mentioned technique are that you can only capture a terrain-style 3D map of one side of an object, and subjects that open their eyes cause holes in the terrain where the reflected light was scattered by the wet surface. To get a 360 degree capture requires multiple scans and software to merge the resulting models.
The problem with subjects opening their eyes goes away if you greatly increase the strength of the scanning beam. This becomes a lesson learned quickly.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
I lost my face in an unforunate smelting accident!
Anyone have any samples of the images it creates?
so
when can we see the whole human body in its full 3D glory
2 minutes? Aim lower.
OMG! Wau!
I wanted to see some pictures. Oh well I guess I'll just take the article for "face" value.
Ba-dum-bum.
Thanks, I'll be here all week. Don't forget to tip your servers.
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Very cool technology. Casinos will most likely implement something like this first. In Nevada it is state law that if someone has registered as a compulsive gambler the burden is on the casino to keep them out.
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Book'em Dano!
Oops! A crack in the floor!
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
I have a nose, a very fine nose.
But I was born without a WIDTH, you insensitive clod!
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
99.999% of cop shops won't be able to afford it or be able to deploy it.
Its a solution (maybe) that's looking for a problem. They're hoping somebody out there is stuck looking a crap load of picures and trying to match a face.
The situation is more complex. To pick a face out of a crowd, you need to scan the crowd and match every face out there against a database full of faces.
The had part is in being able to pick out the faces, not filling the database.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
With that kind of database the children would be safe! Think of the children!
I
There's at least one company with a product that makes a good 3D image from a 2D image. There are applications in security for matching two images taken from different angles - you want to match in 3D, not 2D.
Sure, it's making up information, but the human head isn't an unknown amorphous blob, there is a certain regularity to it.
If you have the conditions to use special hardware and photography techniques you might get better 3D, but if this is being aimed at security, that's not a luxury you usually have.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/kent/45 34903.stm
this seems more cool for acquiring models for games and film...
music - http://www.subatomicglue.com
I don't think that's possible. This is about 3D face cameras. Jacko doesn't have a 3D face anymore.
Signature.
Some point out that this has potential for abuse, probably related to the fact it's being marketed to police. Well, so does just about every piece of modern technology. It's pretty obvious, though, that while things like master databases and 3D mugshots can be abused by a police state, you also need these improvements to stop increasingly sophisticated criminals.
You can't stop technology, because people won't stop craving progress. The only way to prevent these tools from making a Better Police State, is by having a culture that won't tolerate a police state to begin with. That means watching the government, but it also means that individuals have personal ethical standards that keep them from making the little decisions that contribute to misuse of technology. You can be both safe and free, but you can't be safe, free, and ignorant.
I love the bit about being able to simultaneously capture 2D and 3D images. That's so easy, you just get the subject to stand next to a mirror that's tilted at a 45 degree angle. Voila, you have one pic with frontal and profile view, all set for stereographic reconstruction. So what's the big deal? Stereographic Reconstruction has been available for decades. Mirrors have been around for centuries.
I mean, wouldn't a plain old Kodak Polaroid do this?
Flat face, bumpy face. Click/flash, wait one minute. Viola! a 2D visual reproduction of both 2D and 3D.
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Will The Smoking Gun start offering 3d mug shot models we can download? Might be cool to see Nick dancing in one of those mtv2 black-eyed pea videos.
Hasn't Robocop been using this technology for ages?
why is this good? man, fuck the police.
.... who immediatly thought of the old "Sit on the Photocopier" trick?
Even better, only now it will be in 3D!
Say cheese!
Which one of these buttons calls your parents to pick you up?
Lasers Controlled Games!
I've seen half-a-dozen of these press releases by facial-recognition companies and they never say anything about false positives. In fact they rarely provide numbers at all.
"dramatic improvements in the accuracy and performance for facial recognition," yeah, well, how does "dramatic" translate to percentages?
The old familiar math... if there is one known terrorist per million people, and if the false positive rate is one in a thousand, then 999 out of 1000 people identified as "terrorists" will be innocent.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
"..and provides incredible accuracy in correctly mapping the individual being booked in 3D."
How do you book someone in 3D?
AT&ROFLMAO
Lest any of those minroities or women get out of hand, the scary looking B&W caucasian on the side is watching them!
That page does send kind of a goofy message with the imagry.
That reminds me. I want to get one myself. First, I'll shut off my Dell iMac, then I'll hop in my Chevrolet Taurus, and see if my local Target Wal-mart has one. Once I get it, I'll post a few GIF JPG's.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
I'm guessing (reading between the lines) that they've made a less-expensive, relatively portable, easy-to-use 3D face camera. That's not the whole biometric problem or even the hardest part, but the idea is to improve the quality of that database.
The database full of faces we have already is 2D. If you're trying to match a face in a crowd against the database, you'll need to consider every angle, which is easier if you have a 3D picture in the database.
The crucial piece of the technology then is the one that quickly and accurately looks up a picture from a security camera against the database.
It may be useful even before we get that, if it's able to match people more accurately between mugshots. That is, if you catch somebody whose ID is false, and your high-quality 3D mugshot does a better job of matching against the national database for determining his true ID, then you've got something.
I'd guess they're hoping for a government grant to put lots of these into the hands of the 99.999% of cop shops who can't afford it. Presumably it's cheaper and easier to use than the existing ones. I'll let the civil-libertarians and tinfoil-hatters worry about the personal liberties aspects, but this could be one piece of an overall biometric recongizer. Not the hard part, but a part. The wins aren't always the new tech, but the way to make an older tech more available.
So now taking a mug shot is an invasion of privacy. Hmmm. And of course no one should use security cameras. Hmmm. So law enforcement has no right to take any pictures - ever. Riiiight! Maybe this is like the Amish who are afraid a picture will take their soul. Besides, this article was about a 3D imagaing system for mug shots. You added that it will "be kept in a 3D database linked to every other anti-terrorist database out there". I didn't see that in the article. Sometimes I really don't understand the extreme privacy advocates. They say police don't have the right to store mug shots and then put there full name in their auto signature.
--- Tolerance is the axiomatic "virtue" of those without convictions ---
You wrote:
You added that it will "be kept in a 3D database linked to every other anti-terrorist database out there". I didn't see that in the article.
From the article (emphasis mine):
BlueBear Network develops and markets the world's first system that uses biometrics and text records to securely and simultaneously search and share biometric and records information among linked police and integrated justice databases.
I really don't understand the extreme privacy advocates.
Do you understand now?
Heh. If he had decided to rob wearing a plastic bag, said Bozo would likely be sitting there dead in traffic because he forgot to cut airholes.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
So we can have 3d mugshots sure, but will they take 0.0001 seconds to render and change as we see fit ala CSI?
And will it give us the incredible power to do a complete DNA test in a matter of minutes?
> Maybe this is like the Amish who are afraid a picture will take their soul.
Fascinating. And exactly which Amish might those be?
Perhaps this can be used as a cheap 3D capture camera for other objects.
Right now 3D scanners are rather expensive and out of the range of most hobbyists.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
goatse3d.cx
Thinking Man's Mug shot
Executive ability is deciding quickly and getting someone else to do the work. --John G. Pollard
as a result of this new technology.
...
Don't pretend it won't happen - remember the SuperBowl fiasco
Face it, if you want face recognition - USE A HUMAN - we're designed for that.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
All this technology really works only with "cooperative subjects", i.e. people who are willing to sit in fron of a stereo camera head and get a picture taken. Hence it is great for access control (secure areas, border check), can't be fooled by a picture it's a lot more convenient - though less accurate - than iris scan or fingerprints, and doesn't have the stigma attached to the latter in public opinion.
But recognize a face in a crowd? Forget about it. And forget about somebody who's ten years older or ten pounds fatter than the key stored in your database.
there are no false positives - just people voluntarily being interrogated in Gitmo, where the Geneva Conventions are ignored.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
This was left over from a few decades ago when many communities were getting fed up with the Batman. The tights, the youthful 'ward', the batarangs gouging buildings, the constantly speeding Batmobile that never checked in for pollution control certification. It got to be too much.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Do you have any idea of the difference between news and paid publicity?
Hi! Welcome to Slashdot. Seeing as this is your first visit, please note that we already know that the it.slashdot.org color scheme is ugly, it's considered bad form to point out CmdrTaco's dupes after 15 other people have pointed it out, and you're not supposed to read the articles before posting.
Even identifying a face is hard. Its one of those things which is so easy to for humans to do, but computers have really struggled at this. I was using a person tracker, trying to find people in a sceen, it quite happly identified trees as people!
I got out as the whole big brother side scared the living daylights out of me.
Hunting around the links it seems that VisionSphere make the kit.
There are four sorts of people in the world: fools, lunatics, idiots and morons. - Umberto Eco, Foucaut's pendulum.
New 3d porn format? niccccee :)
No more enc jpg's, wmf's, tar'ed gziped pron.
WTG law enforcement.
I am all for privacy but there has to be a line somewhere. Look at the wayback arguement. Do people who publish webpages have a right to expect privacy? Most people on this site would think not. That is a line that is crossed becuase they put it out in the open. I think that if you are arrested the police have the right to check for other outstanding warrents. You obviuosly disagree. That's ok, everyone is entitled to their opinion but I think most people think this is a resonable process. If it gets abused that is a different issue.
--- Tolerance is the axiomatic "virtue" of those without convictions ---
Of course the police should be able to keep records. But anyone in the database should be able to access their information for free and easily so that they can correct any errors or abuses.
Currently hooked on AMP
Does "accurate" mean that the system will correctly identify people with low false positives AND low false negatives commensurate to its expected use? I highly doubt it. Also, how does it deal with the simple problem of people aging, with associated facial changes? No way this is going anywhere.
Currently hooked on AMP
We need a new privacy law that states:
All personal data gathered about you in the course of an investigation (photos, fingerprints, etc.) needs to be returned to you and purged from the law enforcement's database in the event that you are not charged or if you are tried and found not guilty.
I know it's highly unlikely, but that doesn't change that fact that it should exist.
And as you tread the halls of sanity, You feel so glad to be, Unable to go beyond. I have a message, From another time..
> Do you have any idea of the difference between news and paid publicity?
One of them costs more!
I am not an expert, but I have a hard time thinking of any technology that would be worse than trying to interpret stereoscopic pictures. Even the human brain frequently has significant trouble with this, and isn't trying to identify a person by the 3D bumps on his head. If you were going to do it with eyes, you would want more than two eyes, and other configuration improvements, but alternative techniques would seem to greatly reduce the need for such interpretation in the first place by producing an exact position of the reflecting surface.
I think he's using "Amish" as a generic term for "primitive beings with no understanding or awareness advanced technology" I mean, everyone just knows that you could shoot an Amish person with a high-powered rifle, and they wouldn't know what happened unless you explained your "boomstick".
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
note to self: don't give trolls +4 bonus
This sig is false.
They couldn't get the 2D-based face recognition to work sufficiently reliably, so they need a special 3D camera.
This sentence just made me think "this is the stuff Case and Molly watch late at night after a hard day hacking into improbably glowing mainframes, on the cyberpunk cop shopping channel."
It [...] provides incredible accuracy in correctly mapping the individual being booked in 3D.
Yup, this isn't news. Passport photos are taken with a camera with four lenses that make four pictures (or at least the last one I saw did), which are two sets of stereophotos.
Near sighted geeks can take their glasses off to view the stereophoto (hold the photo just before it gets blury, then let each eye look at each picture).
One photo goes in the passport, and the others go to the people who do the passport stuff.
The link wasn't very clear on how this one works, but for years there's been a face/small-object capture device marketed to the game industry that takes a pictures while scanning with an infared lazer and builds models with texture maps.
I would have never got the joke without you.
I'm working on a continuation story with more information and I'll post it here, probably next week. If I can't get it published here, then please come looking for it on Monday or Tuesday in High Tech and on the front page at http://newsblaze.com/ If you bookmark the story you just read, I'll link to the new story from there, too. Sorry I couldn't get the technical information before I published the first part.
Daily News http://newsblaze.com
"Exchanging Faces in Images"/ 20050430/index.html
http://www.mpi-sb.mpg.de/departments/d4/spotlight
The concept of 3D photography is really old, to transpose a image into a 3D wiremesh image shouldnt have take this long to to work out. Take range finding equipment that uses 2 lenses to find the range, compare distances between pixels in left and right eye pictures and you can get a rought estimate of a countour of any giving shape. test this out your self you can see looking ahead of you that objects closer to you shift more distance then stuff further away. I'm no rocket scientist but it was a Idea I have been thinking about. Maby it was my stay at a holiday inn?
...But anyone in the database should be able to access their information...so that they can correct any errors...
Hmm, click-click...
Joe-Bob, checking database:
What? I attacked London? WTF?!?
Muhammed Al-Hackbar:
What terrorist attack? My entry in the database is clean. For Allah! *boom*
Just another "DOJ fascist authoritarian totalitarian bootlicker" -- Zeio
sweep a laser line across the persons face recorded by a fairly high res digital camera at an azimuth offset relative to the persons face. Then, you could use some simple software and trig to calculate the 3d position of any of the points on the face using the laser line position in the images from the digicam. Just shut the laser off to get the 3d image.
I happened to start making this system two days ago...would be funny if that's how the actually did it.