There?s been quite a bit of talk about facial-recognitiontechnology, which automatically identifies an individual user by comparingselected facial features to a database of such features. It is often used as asecurity mechanism, but now it?s making its way into marketing.
For instance, Facebook is testing a new feature called"Tag Suggestions," which scans images uploaded by users andmatches those images with existing users through facial recognition software. Thiscan help Facebook build a detailed demographic for individuals.
But have you looked at your shoes lately? And have youconsidered that your footwear might be able to be used for computer security?Researchers at the Human-ComputerInteraction group at Germany?s Hasso Plattner Institute have?and, as a result, they?ve createdBootstrapper. They believe that, instead of focusing on the face, they can zeroin on shoes to identify users of touch-based tabletop computers, such asMicrosoft?s Surface.
According to the research team: ?While users are interactingwith the table, Bootstrapper observes their shoes using one or more depthcameras mounted to the edge of the table. It then identifies users by matchingcamera images with a database of known shoe images.?
Using a prototype made with Kinect, the German group explainsthat Bootstrapper associates touches to the computer with shoes based on handorientation. This works, they say, because shoes offer large distinct features,such as color, and shoes naturally align themselves with the ground, giving thesystem a well-defined perspective, which reduces ambiguity. They report asimple study in which Bootstrapper recognized participants from a database of18 users with 89 percent accuracy.
Right now the technology is being thought of as beingespecially useful to keep track of the progress of students in a classroom environment. Now that?s a software application with real sole!
