Apple's Multi-User Face Recognition Plans for iPad Revealed in Patent

[SensibleVision]

Your face is your password

Interesting. This article describes a small part of the technology that FastAccess has used since we innovated this type of face recognition in 2006. At CES in a couple weeks, we will demonstrate FastAccess Anywhere – for mobile. Using patent pending technology, we have optimized it to recognize faces in real-world mobile conditions. Our tech is highly resistant to photo and video of an enrolled person’s face.
sensiblevision.com/faa

 

[dokujaryu]

First, it wouldn't necessarily be slow, and it would certainly not be complicated. Second, its not only a replacement for slide-to-unlock - it also allows the computer to know who is using it (i.e. replacing the username).

Of course, one could achieve the same thing with swipe-to-unlock and a seeing screen (Cf. Microsofts work), reading your fingerprint. Guess i should patent that, before Apple do....

So, I'll go into more detail. As the face unlock implementation stands now, the Nexus unlocks the phone at a perfectly agreeable rate, but the pure act of pointing it at your face and getting your face in the circle is fiddly. All of this adds up to an experience that is both more complicated and slower than slide to unlock. I'm sorry I didn't make that crystal clear.

Here are some other complications:

What if I need my wife to do something with my phone? What if I'm driving at a completely unreasonable rate of speed in a residential neighborhood and I need to send a text or skip track on Pandora? What if I have an evil (or good...) twin? What if I tape over the front facing camera out of government paranoia? What if my son looks a LOT like me? What if it's dark and the light switch is WAY over there?

I'm off to write a sit-com about two twins who live together with identical smart phones that face unlock.

 

[divinox]

So, I'll go into more detail. As the face unlock implementation stands now, the Nexus unlocks the phone at a perfectly agreeable rate, but the pure act of pointing it at your face and getting your face in the circle is fiddly. All of this adds up to an experience that is both more complicated and slower than slide to unlock. I'm sorry I didn't make that crystal clear.

Here are some other complications:

What if I need my wife to do something with my phone? What if I'm driving at a completely unreasonable rate of speed in a residential neighborhood and I need to send a text or skip track on Pandora? What if I have an evil (or good...) twin? What if I tape over the front facing camera out of government paranoia? What if my son looks a LOT like me? What if it's dark and the light switch is WAY over there?

I'm off to write a sit-com about two twins who live together with identical smart phones that face unlock.

First, albeit a sometimes foreign concept in Apple-land, theres a thing called choice. Being able to use face unlock isn't the same as having to use face unlock.

Second, i doubt anyone is suggesting that the phone should be in constant-face recon mode. If you're logged in, you're logged in - even if your wife happens to take a look at the screen for a sec or two.

Third, you shouldn't a) drive at unreasonable speeds, and b) text or switch music while doing so. And, as for your paranoia, how do you know they haven't secretly implemented seeing displays already? Better duct tape your entire display, amigo.

That said, i think you're overcomplicating things. The idea is to make for a better multi-user experience by having your device know who you are instead of you having to tell it. Is it perfect? No. However, it doesn't have to be.

Now, are there adequate ways of achieving the same thing? Most definitely. After all, the problem itself is quite old.

 

[Xenc]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

I wonder if we'll ever see multiple user accounts on iOS devices. It certainly could affect hardware sales (eg. a family could all share one iPad).

 

[MacAddict1978]

I'm all for the addition of user accounts (long over due Apple), and this is kinda cool, but all gimmick.

Besides, Facial recognition software is getting pretty good at the consumer level, but until we see something with the weight of what the FBI uses (and that takes super computer power to pull off, so not likely in the iPad) it woulnd't be all that and a bag of chips. Aperture and iPhoto barely do a good job.

 

[Wordsmithmac]

so we can expect apple to sue whoever uses facial recog tech also? will they claim to invent this as well?

apple is the dave hester of tech

 

[djst]

so we can expect apple to sue whoever uses facial recog tech also? will they claim to invent this as well?

apple is the dave hester of tech

Not in general.
But if Apples method is better and people take to it,(which is generally the case).
Then if these better methods start appearing on other manufactures phones pc's and tablets,there is a good chance litigation will follow.

 

[dethmaShine]

I want user accounts on the iPad, and this may be part of that.

What would happen if you showed it a photo of someone else?

Sounds like an overlay on user-accounts.

I believe - just like they wanted the user to ignore and not see the underlying file system, they do not want the user to see the underlying user accounts.

Just unlock and use. No learning.

 

[Hemingray]

Is that Mr. Skullhead dressed up as a bellhop??

 

[Wordsmithmac]

Not in general.
But if Apples method is better and people take to it,(which is generally the case).
Then if these better methods start appearing on other manufactures phones pc's and tablets,there is a good chance litigation will follow.

lenovo has a FR tech in their pcs and laptops i never use it on my laptop but its there...what happens if apple's method is just like that? In ubuntu linux in the repos there are FR apps as well. then lastly u have android with it. not all FR tech is the same. i'm interested in how apple will separate theirs and if someone elses facial tech does similar but existed earlier will apple sue? sadly apple nowadays is a bit sue happy. we will see.

 

[AdrianWerner]

Such patent either won't be awarded or if it will, it won't stand in court.
Lenovo has been including this technology (including multiple faces = multiple profiles part) on most of their laptops for 4 years already.

 

[Oletros]

Such patent either won't be awarded or if it will, it won't stand in court.
Lenovo has been including this technology (including multiple faces = multiple profiles part) on most of their laptops for 4 years already.

The patent is NOT for facial recognition or multiple profiles

 

[Ubuntu]

That's very useful, for the multi-user functionality. Otherwise it'd just seem a bit gimmicky like the feature on Android 4.0.

 

[thenerdal]

The patent is NOT for facial recognition or multiple profiles

Is your avatar Chuck Norris' hand?

 

[william231]

Can 1 person add more than 1 account?
Such smile face/ angry face/ close 1 eye?
If yes, that will be cool, I can put some private things on one of account but still can share the phone with someone

 

[danielowenuk]

Hmm, first thing, this patent talks about proximity. Lets look at that first, how would it work? Camera? The camera that's blocked by the smart cover that Apple sold you? How does that work then?

Secondly, face recognition to recognise someone's face and change the account to someone else. Except that the iPad doesn't support multiple accounts.

I can see this being an idea that someone had at Apple, and given the value of patents these days they patent things just to make money from when someone else implements it. If I am honest that's kinda the whole problem with patent law.

 

[krischik]

Prior art.

Hey Samsung, did you get that?

I would think so. And I guess Samsung is now pretty pissed that they have to go to a (another) approx. 5 year court struggle to prove prior art and invalidate the patent.

More an more I wonder I am ashamed to own Apple products.

 

[techkidd4400]

I have my doubts about the purpose of Face recognition on the iPad. If Apple wanted to add multi-user account access to the iPad, they could easily have done so by now; the feature is built into the Mac OS. Apple purposely left it out of iOS (mabe because it would have cost them multi-sales to family users). Still, it would be interesting to see how FR could work with Siri.

 

[dokujaryu]

First, albeit a sometimes foreign concept in Apple-land, theres a thing called choice. Being able to use face unlock isn't the same as having to use face unlock.

Second, i doubt anyone is suggesting that the phone should be in constant-face recon mode. If you're logged in, you're logged in - even if your wife happens to take a look at the screen for a sec or two.

Third, you shouldn't a) drive at unreasonable speeds, and b) text or switch music while doing so. And, as for your paranoia, how do you know they haven't secretly implemented seeing displays already? Better duct tape your entire display, amigo.

That said, i think you're overcomplicating things. The idea is to make for a better multi-user experience by having your device know who you are instead of you having to tell it. Is it perfect? No. However, it doesn't have to be.

Now, are there adequate ways of achieving the same thing? Most definitely. After all, the problem itself is quite old.

A few questions:

Where is Apple land and how can I get there? Are the surfaces lickable?

I love choice. Saying that a particular choice is slow doesn't mean I don't have an intimate and sometimes financially irresponsible relationship with choice. I'm extremely discerning about my choices. I love how you criticize my choice to go interstate speeds through school zones while texting but then say that because I find something to be a stupid feature and I must live in APPLE LAND where we don't have choice!

I wasn't actually considering the situation you described with my wife, but it's an interesting problem as well. I was more thinking of the very common situation of asking my wife to reply to an email for me while I'm driving. She won't be able to unlock my phone unless she holds the phone in front of my face, thus causing us to crash into the school bus rather than my typical Tokyo Drift power slide around the bus eliciting cheers from the passengers. However, I think in your situation means if she does unlock my phone with her face, and it's set up for multi user, she won't even see my email. The plot thickens.

Also, HOW DO YOU KNOW I DON'T COVER MY CAMERAS? ARE YOU WATCHING ME???

All kidding aside, I'm just trying to bring up my complaints with (get ready for this Droid fans) the best face unlock I've seen to date, the one on the Galaxy Nexus, as a way to explain my concerns with Apple trying the same thing. However, in the past they have taken other things that I didn't think worked very well and made them work better. Here's some issues they can address to give me the choice I want to spend my money on. They are historically very good at this.

I don't think I'm overcomplicating anything since all of the situations I mentioned, that weren't jokes, happened to me today... several times. I have unlocked my phone at least 100 times today and I'm sure I saved at least a second per time that I did it versus face unlock. A probable minute of my life is spared.

Here's a recent review of the Galaxy Nexus where a guy goes on for three paragraphs about the distance from the 'screen wake up' button to the screen area for the slide to unlock.

"Believe it or not (I bet you believe it), the Lock button and the slide-to-unlock tap target are too far apart from one another. This drove me nuts!

The phone is literally too big to easily and comfortably unlock with one hand. It’s so big, that to hold it in one hand where I can comfortably press the lock/unlock button I am holding the phone in the middle. But in that grip I cannot comfortably reach the slide to unlock slide. And so I would have to shimmy my hand down the phone to be able to reach the slide-to-unlock tap target. Or, I have to use the phone with two hands. It would be better if the “slide to unlock” icon were sitting right underneath the time/date on the Lock screen.

I unlock my iPhone dozens if not hundreds of times per day. It’s a muscle memory at this point and it is a piece of cake. Due to the size of the Galaxy Nexus and the placement of its Lock button, I don’t feel that I have a good solid grip on the phone when holding it in such a way that I can press the hardware lock button and also reach the slide-to-unlock tap target."

Back to kidding, I found this image when I searched for Apple Land. It looks fun. I would chose to go there, therefore I don't like choice. (i'm so confused)

 

[Nand]

Sounds really cool...
I first thought was could you use the screen as a light source to take general lighting out of the equation?
Maybe not white light but if you strobed the screen through a range of colours then skin would reflect each colour differently but I'm wondering if the relative intensities of each colour would be the same regardless of other lighting conditions?

My laptop is a Alienware m15x and have a face recognition, In one updated for the face recognition they implemented that the screen turn bright white. They think using the screen as a light source. Later in another updated they removed this. ( doesn't work like they expected)
I usually don't wait for the computer to recognize my face, most of the time it can't, it's faster enter the password.

 

[Dinø]

Apple will never implement this

Why allow two family members to share a single iPad when you could potentially sell them two? This is just another card to hold in their pocket.

 

[radgar]

Neat if it sets the iPad/iOS/MacOS device up for me

This would be neat if I could pick up an iPad/other device and it would set things up the way I like. Sounds feasible: iCloud records how I organise my icons, knows what music I have etc.

As long as it works faster than 'faces' and better than Siri it'd be neat.

I can't help but think that userID/Passcode is a bit easier though. Less Star Trek perhaps.

 

[Eolian]

I wish they'd just passcode lock the Mail app first

 

[foiden]

Interesting, but I would imagine this would be an "ok" but not "fantastic" addition at first. Microsoft does something like this on the Xbox 360, and it sometimes takes longer than just switching it yourself. It's not a perfect setup, especially since a lot of people wear different things on their face from time to time. Glasses often throw this off, and for people who wear corrective vision, they go back and forth between contacts or no contacts.

Then again, I guess the tech could be constantly improving at a faster rate than I'm aware of. Touch recognition has come a long way in the last several years, a sudden high-speed surge of improvement around 2006-2007.

 

[divinox]

A few questions:

Where is Apple land and how can I get there? Are the surfaces lickable?

Ask LTD. He spends most of his time there. Personally, i've never been.

I love choice. Saying that a particular choice is slow doesn't mean I don't have an intimate and sometimes financially irresponsible relationship with choice. I'm extremely discerning about my choices. I love how you criticize my choice to go interstate speeds through school zones while texting but then say that because I find something to be a stupid feature and I must live in APPLE LAND where we don't have choice!

You say this, and yet...

I wasn't actually considering the situation you described with my wife, but it's an interesting problem as well. I was more thinking of the very common situation of asking my wife to reply to an email for me while I'm driving. She won't be able to unlock my phone unless she holds the phone in front of my face, thus causing us to crash into the school bus rather than my typical Tokyo Drift power slide around the bus eliciting cheers from the passengers. However, I think in your situation means if she does unlock my phone with her face, and it's set up for multi user, she won't even see my email. The plot thickens.

You say that. No, you wouldn't crash. You would have her login through an alternative means, e.g. by clicking your name/icon on the login screen. How hard was that?

Also, HOW DO YOU KNOW I DON'T COVER MY CAMERAS? ARE YOU WATCHING ME???

Every step you take...

All kidding aside, I'm just trying to bring up my complaints with (get ready for this Droid fans) the best face unlock I've seen to date, the one on the Galaxy Nexus, as a way to explain my concerns with Apple trying the same thing. However, in the past they have taken other things that I didn't think worked very well and made them work better. Here's some issues they can address to give me the choice I want to spend my money on. They are historically very good at this.

Its just that your beef isn't really with face unlock per se, but at best a particular - and perhaps flawed - implementation of it. As stated, none of the issues raised need be an issue at all.

I don't think I'm overcomplicating anything since all of the situations I mentioned, that weren't jokes, happened to me today... several times. I have unlocked my phone at least 100 times today and I'm sure I saved at least a second per time that I did it versus face unlock. A probable minute of my life is spared.

Except that this isn't just unlocking. Its logging in. If you are logged in, and you continue to use your device, there is no absolute need for you to "face login" again. Now, if you were to log out each and every time you wanted to lock your screen, that would be a different matter. But do you? Do you have a pin code lock on the lock screen as well? If not, whats your point?

Once more. Choice. Its really that simple.

Here's a recent review of the Galaxy Nexus where a guy goes on for three paragraphs about the distance from the 'screen wake up' button to the screen area for the slide to unlock.

Is he forced to use it? Can he use alternative, more direct approaches? If so, what is the problem here?

Back to kidding, I found this image when I searched for Apple Land. It looks fun. I would chose to go there, therefore I don't like choice. (i'm so confused)

Image

Like it or not, but to be frank - you don't seem to get the concept of it.