

Face recognition + the entire original series of Star Trek (w/ vids) - lbrandy
http://facemining.pittpatt.com

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stcredzero
There was this one guy in The Original Series who appeared quite often as an
extra. He was a roman guard in "Bread and Circuses" and also a red shirt in
"Trouble with Tribbles." He was also in other episodes as an extra. I'd like
to see a full face index, including the extras, so I could figure out how many
episodes he was in.

(And, no I'm not talking about David Ross/Lt. Galloway, who appeared in 9 TOS
episodes. The extra I'm talking about was uncredited.)

EDIT: I've been browsing Memory Alpha. There are quite a few actors who
appeared in a bunch of episodes, some are in more episodes than major
characters!

64 eps - <http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/William_Blackburn>

32 eps - <http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Roger_Holloway>

59 eps - <http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Eddie_Paskey>

~~~
teej
I was going to reply earlier with a google search coming up with a rough count
for William Blackburn, but I couldn't figure out if he was your guy.

<http://tinyurl.com/cbqrfo> (TinyURL'd to preserve formatting)

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stcredzero
He's not. In terms of episodes, I think he's even more prolific!

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ilamont
It's only a matter of time before someone creates an algorithm and app that
takes publicly available and tagged photos of people (think FB profiles), and
then uses the info to identify all of the people in a photo at a political
rally, crime scene, or amateur porn site.

~~~
dryicerx
It's already under development by several startups, including ours (except
ours isn't for gov't uses, but to map your personal photos with names using
facebook pictures).

The cool thing about facebook's photos is that with their API, you can pull
the name->XY locations of the picture which has a person tagged to it (making
the facial detection portion super easy). Then with the set of name ->
faces[], training the facial recognition database becomes even easier.

Facebook it self has a even more sinister potential. Imagine they train a
facial recognition database for everyone already tagged in photos on facebook.
Then have a iPhone app, which you can take a picture of anyone... which would
spit out the name/info/school/interests/everything. There is nothing
technologically stopping this, and it will be just a matter of time.

(puts on my tin foil hat)

~~~
mhb
Will this be a net positive or negative for society? Stalking-type use becomes
possible, but maybe people behave better if they feel less anonymous.

~~~
sep332
This will be a huge change for people who live in cities, but are currently
effectively disconnected from one another. Imagine even just knowing the name
of each person you pass on the street, and knowing that they know your name.
Huge social change. I think it's positive.

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jimbokun
Great marketing, timed for the release of the new Star Trek movie. (Assuming
that it's not an old demo, and its just proximity to the movie responsible for
it being posted and up-voted here.)

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wallflower
This is just my opinion but I think the polygonal outline (which mimics your
logo?) you use to show the face id makes the technology you've developed
appear less professional than it should. Perhaps, a more processing-intensive
desaturation/alpha blend (like they do in 20/20 with surveillance videos)
where you highlight the head area?

~~~
skwiddor
The arrowed side of the polygon indicates the direction of motion of the head.

<http://www.pittpatt.com/technology/>

~~~
abstractbill
Right, the polygon _makes sense_ , but I agree with wallflower - it's not very
aesthetically pleasing. I think a good designer could come up with something
that is both functional and nicer to look at.

~~~
skwiddor
and the moon on a stick too please

~~~
abstractbill
People who make amazing technical products, but fail to present them as well
as they could, are often disappointed by the outcome.

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ieatpaste
Anyone guess which algorithms they're using?

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lbrandy
Our own.

Our company was founded as a CMU spin-off of the Robotics Institute to
commercialize the work of one of our founders. See:
<http://pittpatt.com/about/>

~~~
dryicerx
Is there any way to contact you guys in regards to licensing your product? (I
tried the contact form on the site, but no dice from it)

~~~
lbrandy
I just checked and the web form appears to be working correctly. Someone
mentioned we had a glitch recently. Feel free to submit it again.

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ktharavaad
Pittpatt definitely has the best face-detection algorithm I've seen in any
commercial/opensource system. The algorithm they use can be found in these
papers:

<http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~hws/>

Maybe someday they'll get ported into openCV to replace the current detector
which doesn't handle frontal features well.

