NEC's New Face Recognition System Is 100 Times Smaller Than Existing Ones


Face recognition technology that can be used to identify a given person’s age and gender isn’t exactly new. But NEC has now developed a system [JP] that’s sized at just 7x12x1cm, which is about 100 times smaller than existing solutions (according to the company). NEC also claims that their mini system needs 50 times less power than its already commercialized counterparts.

As usual, the system identifies and analyzes certain feature points of a face to estimate a person’s age and gender (in the picture above, the system says the man shown is between 47 and 53 years old, for example). The imaging sensor is integrated with a charge-coupled device camera, which can only capture one face to analyze at a time at this point.

NEC plans to start selling selling the system within this fiscal year, mainly targeting vending machine, POS and ATM operators.