FaceFirst partners with Samsung on rapid facial recognition

Capable of matching faces at a rate of a million comparisons per second (per server) against a database of known terrorists, criminals, or persons of interest, a new military-grade facial recognition system from FaceFirst LLC (Camarillo, CA) gathers images from Samsung Techwin American (Ridgefield Park, NJ) megapixel surveillance cameras. In the facial detection stage, the FaceFirst turnkey surveillance platform can apply biometrics and other analytics at any stage of the feature extraction process. For example, biometric algorithms from Cognitec (Dresden, Germany) can be applied to generate a template that removes facial hair, hairline, and color, all while progressively reducing the quantity as it increases the quality of data from surveillance video. The template is compared against database images using a defined threshold, and an alert is sent to the concerned party if a match is found.

Although Samsung is the preferred camera in use with the system, the FaceFirst algorithms and software can be integrated as plug-ins to any camera (even cell-phone and digital SLR cameras) with at least 1 Mpixel resolution, 10 frame/s capability, a lens with a minimum focal length of at least 10 mm and minimal spherical aberration, and datastreaming capability for offsite image processing. Contact Joseph Saad at jsaad@facefirst.com.