“The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Thursday published Apple’s patent application for a system that can both lock and unlock an iDevice based on automatic facial analysis,” Mikey Campbell reports for AppleInsider.
“Apple’s descriptively titled ‘Locking and unlocking a mobile device using facial recognition’ patent application describes a mobile device that automatically captures and analyzes images of a user’s face, or lack thereof, to lock and unlock itself,” Campbell reports. “To solve the issue of having to lock or unlock a device manually, Apple proposes that a product can be configured to lock itself if the user’s face is no longer present in images captured by the front-facing camera, and unlock itself when the user’s face reappears. In order to automate the process, Apple relies on device triggers, such as motion, time thresholds and positioning.”
Read more, and see Apple’s patent application diagrams, in the full article here.
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Apple updates ‘head tracking’ patent and more – August 9, 2012
Apple patent application reveals 3D-based secure facial recognition system – May 10, 2012
Apple HDTV features facial recognition, Siri, built-in iSight camera for FaceTime chat, says source – May 7, 2012
Isn’t Google working on this also? I wonder who started first. Well, actually I don’t.
Is there only one way to do facial recognition? If there is, then it’s probably not the google way.
Yeah, even as an Apple fanboy I feel this is kind of odd unless the patent was applied for 3 to 4 years ago.
If you read the article, you’d see that Apple applied for their patent six months before Google applied for theirs. So although Google has received a patent on its facial recognition Apple has not even though they applied first. Don’t know why that is.
The Apple filed the patent six months before Google, according to AppleInsider
Didn’t Phil Schiller state at the keynote that the front-facing camera was capable of facial recognition? Seemed to be a passing note but for whatever reason I swear I heard it. Perhaps it’s just for image apps or focusing…
It’s not the camera that does the facial recognition. No more so than your eyes doing the recognizing.
Ok. I kinda figured after I posted my dumb comment…haha
Just imagine the hijinks that ensue when your buddies “borrow” your phone after you’ve crashed on the couch at the end of a party…
just put picture of said iPhone owner on an iPad in front of camera…voilà!
Pity the iPhone users whose faces are so ugly they break cameras.
😉
I have an identical twin. What will that mean to us?
Then it becomes a feature. Device sharing for family members. Patent it.