Face Recognition in Education
Apple announced Face ID. A face recognition based authentication. There have been other players who have attempted biometric authentication in recent times (Samsung, Google, etc.). Facial recognition is finding increasing adoption as it becomes more robust. Some examples of large scale upcoming adoption of face technology are in the news (Dubai & Hong Kong Airports).
In comparison with other biometric mechanisms, face recognition brings more than just identity management for education. As technology advances, new possibilities are likely to emerge. So what possibilities does this technology brings to education?
In education, face recognition touches the following key aspects for learners:
- Privacy and security policies in education that have seen increasing focus and awareness.
- Personalization in education that demands identity management & usage data for analytics.
Technology of Facial Recognition
Face recognition is not new. But there is a likely revolution on the horizon. Reliable face recognition is trending towards becoming robust mainstream technology. Android has had face recognition for some time now. However, it has not been considered a secure solution so far. Samsung recently launched its face and iris scanning capability in Galaxy-S8. The technology for iris scanning relies on infrared light emitted by a hardware component built into the phone. A special camera takes an image of the iris flooded by this “near infrared” radiation to scan the iris. In the Samsung solution, Iris scanning is considered more secure than its face scanning technology. Apple launched face recognition via Face ID in iPhone-X recently that replaced Touch ID for authentication. Apple believes that the technology is reliable enough (even though there are doubters out there). With Apple launching Face ID, others are likely to follow soon. Face recognition as developed by Apple uses a 3D map of the face. Its use of specialized hardware for creation of 3D face scans is going to be faster and more reliable than traditional 2D imaging. A specialized hardware + software based solution is likely to be better than using traditional cameras for recognition.Use Cases of Face Recognition
Face recognition can serve well in two different scenarios in education.- Authentication: serving like any other biometric identification mechanism but with one difference. It is better than fingerprints in that it is non intrusive when used for monitoring identity.
- Capture face expressions: This is an advanced scenario and has a bigger potential to help make online education better.