I stuck my neck on the line at the beginning of the year and said that 2011 would be the year of face recognition. It’s nearly August and so far face recognition technology for mobile devices has yet to make a significant appearance.

I was somewhat disappointed that Apple didn’t announce face recognition with iOS 5 back in June, particularly as they acquired Swedish company Polar Rose (famous for the demo below) at the end of last year.

According to 9To5Mac however a couple of APIs have been discovered in the latest beta of iOS 5 that give credence to face recognition making an appearance later this year. The newly discovered APIs are:

• hasLeftEyePosition
• hasRightEyePosition
• hasMouthPosition
• leftEyePosition
• rightEyePosition
• mouthPosition

Polar Rose

Polar Rose are were not the only company experimenting with mobile face tracking. At Mobile World Congress in February I met with US based company Viewdle who were showcasing some amazing demos.
They recently released a beta of their Android face recognition app which can be found here. I haven’t looked into it yet so feel free to share you comments.

Perhaps the last half of 2011 will be the year of face recognition.

Viewdle

Related posts you may like:

1. Mobile Face Recognition
2. Ice Cream Sandwich Face Recognition
3. 2012 The Year of Face Recognition
4. Augmented Reality Face Recognition
5. Face Tracking is Beyond Reality