SoftKinect, a wholly owned Sony subsidiary which makes camera sensor modules, is rumored to be demoing facial recognition biometric software on a Sony Xperia smartphone at the MWC tradeshow in Shanghai this week. This is not your normal face detection software in that the sensors used would detect faces in 3D data.
2D “face unlock” features have been around in Android since 2012. The problem with that, as with the face detection security measures in the new Samsung Galaxy S8, is that since it is 2D, it can be beaten with a 2D picture. Sony presents SoftKinect’s 3D sensors as the answer to this particular issue.
SoftKinect’s 3D sensor will capture a depth map of the user’s face. This will allow biometric security even with non-frontal face scans, and can be used for authentication. There’s presumably more flexibility (and fewer laughs for tech blogs), since it is hardly easy for people to 3D print a face to beat this security. If the enrollment of the biometric data is robust, this should probably work better.
How secure will this be? It remains to be seen. Normal face data is usually not very secure, but the addition of a depth sensor should amp up the security a great deal.
SOURCE: Tech Crunch
