Apple patent hints at smart facial detection in iPhone 8

PanARMENIAN.Net - Apple on Tuesday, March 6 was awarded a patent covering the detection of human faces in digital video feeds by leveraging depth map information, technology that could be a building block of a face-based bio-recognition system rumored to debut with this year's iPhone, AppleInsider says.

Granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Apple's U.S. Patent No. 9,589,177 for "Enhanced face detection using depth information" describes an offshoot of computer vision technology that applies specialized hardware and software systems to object recognition tasks, specifically those involving human faces.

The invention is part of a patent stash acquired by Apple through its 2013 purchase of Israeli motion capture specialist PrimeSense. A steady stream of PrimeSense IP has been trickling through the USPTO in the intervening years, including patents for 3D mapping, a 3D virtual keyboard and more.

As noted in today's published document, face detection algorithms can be defined as software capable of scanning a digital image and extrapolating whether a portion, or "window," contains a face. Applied to a dynamic scene, or in some cases live video, the operation becomes increasingly complex as faces can appear at different locations and at different depths.

To adequately monitor a given scene, a conventional system simultaneously samples multiple candidate windows of different sizes. The need to process a plurality of windows not only requires more computing power, but might also result in an increased false detection rate.

To cut down on processing overhead and potential false readings, Apple proposes applying depth information to existing face detection algorithms. As outlined in some embodiments, a depth map can be used to intelligently scale window sizes according to their depth coordinates as based on a "standard" face size.

In the patent language, a specialized infrared light emission system projects a pattern of optical radiation onto a scene. The patterned light is captured, processed and converted into a corresponding depth map.