The Uses of Facial Recognition Across Industries

Facial recognition is a technology that has a lot of applications across many industries and offering a lot of benefits and features for the users. In fact, facial recognition could generate $7 billion in revenue by 2024. We thought it would be interesting to see how facial recognition is used in the automotive, retail and security industries since these industries have really embraced facial recognition technology and are now reaping a lot of the benefits.

Facial Recognition Technology in Automotive

Facial recognition is used in the automotive industry to make the driving experience safer and enjoyable. One of the interesting safety features is unlocking the car via facial recognition. This is something that could really make a huge impact by giving drivers peace of mind especially since $6 billion was lost to motor theft in 2018. Just like you can unlock your smartphone thanks to facial recognition, you will be able to unlock your car as well. This is much more securer than the traditional lock and key approach we use now because it is much easier to pick a lock than fool a facial recognition camera.

In terms of safety on the road, facial recognition can be very useful here as well since it can detect patterns that signal drowsiness, inattentiveness, anger, and other possible safety issues. When the car notices that you are falling asleep at the wheel, it will intervene right away with an audible warning, seat vibration, slow down the car and even take control of the wheel. It can also take preventive measures by offering a different route if it detects that you are angry at your regular commute.

These are just a few of the innovative ways facial recognition is used to help people drive more carefully. There will be many new use cases and solutions based on facial recognition in just a few years, as self-driving cars become mainstream.

Facial Recognition in Retail

Facial recognition is widely used in retail to enhance a wide range of processes so that the store itself becomes more efficient. Businesses can replace time cards and other time-tracking methods with facial recognition cameras and receive insights on the areas of the store that requires the most attention from the employees. This will allow employees to provide better and faster service for their customers which will increase customer satisfaction.

For the customers, facial recognition offers enhanced security at the point of sale. Instead of entering a PIN code or signing a receipt, the facial recognition camera will verify your identity. As far as the shopping experience is concerned, facial recognition cameras can provide shoppers with personalized in-store offers. Companies can take the data from loyalty programs, with the customers’ permission of course, and make personalized recommendations for each customer when they see that they have entered the store.

As time goes and facial recognition technology becomes more advanced, we will probably see them replace cashiers at checkout. Amazon has experimented with this in their stores, called Amazon Go and we will probably see this technology become widespread very soon. What is so fascinating about these stores is that they do not have human workers. If you would like to make a purchase, you can take the item off the shelf and the Face ID camera will capture your identity and you will be able to pay with a credit card, just like a regular order from Amazon’s website.

Facial Recognition in Security

Facial recognition is already used by many companies as a replacement for ID badges for granting access. Instead of swiping or scanning their ID card, employees can enter an office building or restricted areas inside the office simply by standing in front of a camera that is powered by facial recognition technology.

Such technology has also found some interesting implementations in law enforcement with police using it to catch suspects. Since it is easy for criminals to hide in large crowds, there needs to be a fast yet reliable method of identifying individuals from the sea of other people. Such technology has already been proven effective in cases like the Boston Marathon bombing where police were able to identify and catch the suspects in time thanks to facial recognition technology. Recent statistics show that more than 54.8% of people feel that facial recognition should be used if it helps increase public safety.

The Need for More Accurate Data Annotation

A lot of companies are working on developing the next generation of AI products since such technology offers uncapped potential. The use cases we mentioned are only a small fraction of what facial recognition is capable of. For this technology to progress and become more accurate, high-quality data annotation is needed to better train the machine learning algorithms.

Mindy Support is dedicated to helping companies and researchers perfect facial recognition technology by offering quality data annotation services at scale. Focus more on creating the best possible product and let Mindy Support take the data annotation burden off your shoulders!

Posted by Il’ya Dudkin