How to track a face in realtime

MIDDLEWARE IS GETTING quite specific, take FaceAPI by Seeingmachines for example. FaceAPI is a facial recognition API and middleware setup, and it does only that.

Yellow mask included for free!

As far as facial recognition goes, it is one of the best out there, it tracks no less than seven parameters with more coming. Right now, it sees lips (2), eyebrows (2 hopefully) and head position (3 axis plus rotation) in real time. Eye recognition is slated to be added in the near future.

One of the key points is that it doesn't require any expensive hardware, just a webcam and a decent PC. On an Intel Core2NumberNumeral at 2.4GHz, the software uses about 25-30 per cent CPU time to do its work on a USB camera at 30FPS. Instead of a Wiimote strapped to your forehead to do parallax, you can just use a webcam now.

Interestingly, each component is tracked by it's own thread, so the software will toss out a lot of threads to parse the data. If you are looking for an excuse to expense a Skulltrail on your desk, now you have it. I can see this software popping up in multi-core justification demos all over the place.

FaceAPI is sold more or less as a black box, you put the video stream in to it, and you get coordinates out. Sounds simple enough, and with their API, hopefully it is. FaceAPI v3 is out for Windows, with Linux and Mac versions being worked on now.

Licensing is not all that bad, about $4K per dev being the stated price, with a per-title middleware license on top of that. Prices are likely very flexible though, write and ask. Seeingmachines also offers a free non-commercial license as well, so if you want to do your thesis on a robot that shaves eyebrows with a straight razor in real time, give them a call.

FaceAPI has some interesting possibilities for gaming. It is a little CPU heavy right now, but as power increases and core counts go up, there is a lot of potential in this tech. Current consoles are hopelessly under-CPU'd, but the next gen won't be.µ