Face recognition technology is still receiving masks

The outbreak of the Covid-19 epidemic made the masks an inseparable place for many people whenever they had to go out. This raises the question of whether facial recognition systems that are heavily installed in public areas can do the job well when people wear masks.

Recently, a Chinese technology company named Hanwang Technology said that it has successfully developed a facial recognition software system that can accurately detect a person's identity even if that person is wearing a mask.

To build this advanced identification system, the company's engineers had to use a database containing information on 6 million masked faces and a small portion of face mask data collected. and research for the past 10 years. Work was carried out in January, when the Covid-19 epidemic was showing signs of outbreaks in China, people were forced to wear masks when going out, making facial recognition systems difficult. And after less than a month, Hanwang Technology's new identification technology has been tested on the market and launched a few days later.

Currently, the company offers new systems under two types of products. The first is a 'single-channel' identification system, installed mainly at the entrances of apartment and office buildings. The second product is a 'multi-channel' identification using multiple simultaneous surveillance camera clusters, installed in large areas, which can simultaneously recognize 30 people in 1 second.

The results show that the system has an accuracy recognition rate of about 95% for wearers and 99.5% for non-wearers. However, it is still difficult in the case of subjects wearing both sunglasses and masks because nearly all the important information is not recognized.

China is one of the world's most sophisticated and state-of-the-art public surveillance systems. Identification systems have been implemented to manage social order as well as to raise public awareness. However, it also raises controversies about privacy and personal freedom.