FACE RECOGNITION AS ENTRY PASS
THE days of having to remember to bring your ID with you may soon be a thing of the past. The town of Wuzhen, China, is now using face recognition technology to act as its entry pass through the gates of tourist sites.
The system uses cameras to spot people as they approach the entry, and checks these against a database of registered visitors within a few seconds.
The facial recognition technology is said to be up to 99.77 per cent accurate.
Wuzhen is a popular tourist town with visitors flocking to see its stunning river system and museums.
Baidu, a web firm which is often referred to as Chinese Google, created the system.
When people now check in to their accommodation, they will have their photo taken and uploaded to a central database.
Upon leaving and re-entering the town, the system will re-check that they are still a guest at a hotel, before allowing them back in.
The technology is being used to track the 5,000 visitors that stay in the town’s hotels every day.
Yuanqing Lin, director of the Institute of Deep Learning at Baidu, said: “With our technology, you don’t need to present ID. When you are approaching a gate it will take a photo of you and it will compare that photo to the database. Just one step.”
Wuzhen used to monitor its visitors using a ticket-entry system, but this could easily be abused, and it was discovered that some people were sharing their tickets to avoid paying. A fingerprint identification tool was then introduced but this took too long and resulted in lengthy queues.
Baidu’s system is based on neural networks, which can process huge amounts of data — more than one billion faces — with 99.8 per cent accuracy.
As well as recognising faces, the system can also detect facial movements, which is handy when dealing with someone holding up a mask.
However, Baidu does not operate the system or provide cameras or gates.
Instead, it licenses its technology, and the servers this runs on, as well as helping the park’s operators install the system. So far, Baidu’s system is being used in Wuzhen, but the firm is also using the software for employee entry at its Beijing headquarters.