Face averages enhance user recognition for smartphone security.

ABSTRACT: Our recognition of familiar faces is excellent, and generalises across viewing conditions. However, unfamiliar face recognition is much poorer. For this reason, automatic face recognition systems might benefit from incorporating the advantages of familiarity. Here we put this to the test using the face verification system available on a popular smartphone (the Samsung Galaxy). In two experiments we tested the recognition performance of the smartphone when it was encoded with an individual's 'face-average'--a representation derived from theories of human face perception. This technique significantly improved performance for both unconstrained celebrity images (Experiment 1) and for real faces (Experiment 2): users could unlock their phones more reliably when the device stored an average of

SUBMITTER: Robertson DJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4373928 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature