Face recognition for smart environments

Smart environments, wearable computers, and ubiquitous computing in general are the coming "fourth generation" of computing and information technology. But that technology will be a stillbirth without new interfaces for interaction, minus a keyboard or mouse. To win wide consumer acceptance, these interactions must be friendly and personalized; the next-generation interfaces must recognize people in their immediate environment and, at a minimum, know who they are. In this article, the authors discuss face recognition technology, how it works, problems to be overcome, current technologies, and future developments and possible applications. Twenty years ago, the problem of face recognition was considered among the most difficult in artificial intelligence and computer vision. Today, however, there are several companies that sell commercial face recognition software that is capable of high-accuracy recognition with databases of more than 1,000 people. The authors describe the face recognition technology used, explaining the algorithms for face recognition as well as novel applications, such as behavior monitoring that assesses emotions based on facial expressions.