When delegates of the 16th National Congress of the Communist Party of China were lining up to enter Beijing's Great Hall of the People on November 8, an automatic identity recognition system was used to capture delegates facial information on camera before allowing them to enter the hall without any delay. This facial feature detection and recognition technology, developed independently by scientists from the Computer Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), passed formal expert appraisals in Beijing on November 26.

Research into the facial feature detection and recognition technology started in 1994 as part of China's vital March 1986 Program. A person in charge of the Computer Institute of CAS says the successful development of this core technology is a significant breakthrough for the Program.

An appraisal committee comprised of more than ten scientists including academics Wang Chengwei, from the Chinese Academy of Engineering, and Tan Tieniu, head of the Automatic Institute of CAS, concluded after serious research and discussion that the facial feature detection and recognition technology has made breakthroughs in face detection, facial features extraction, face recognition and verification. It is the leading technology in China and has reached advanced international standards.

Gao Wen, chief scientist from the digital research group of the Computer Institute of CAS and the project's leading researcher, gave a demonstration of their works. The automatic identity recognition system is able to capture the facial information of an unidentified person via a camera and analyze their facial features, including skin color, veins, and shape, before comparing them with parameters saved in the system's database. The identity of the person will be recognized immediately.

"It takes only one-tenth to one-twentieth of a second to detect a person's face and one minute to provide recognition of a person's identity on an ordinary personal computer. It will be even faster on better equipped computers," said Gao Wen, "Human physical feature recognition technology including the recognition of facial features, fingerprints, palms, irises, voices, signatures and retinas, are all computer security technologies that have been developed in recent years. As a noninvasive form of recognition technology, the facial feature recognition system is an important scientific technique that can be applied in anti-terrorism and security."

"Compared with the best current system of the same category in the US, our product has more advantages in certain situations such as being able to perform functions against complicated background, under gloomy light and shaky condition," said Gao Wen.

It is reported that the facial feature recognition technology has played a special and important role in many areas including police surveillance, jail monitoring, judicial identification, civil aviation security, port monitoring and providing verification of various identification papers and bank card holders.

(China.org.cn by Wang Qian, December 3, 2002)