Subscription-based service offers small law enforcement departments an easy and cost-effective way to positively identify potential suspects
Conway, N.H. (May 8, 2013) - Animetrics, a developer of advanced 3D facial recognition and identity management solutions for law enforcement and the military, today announced the availability of ID-Ready, a subscription-based online service for smaller law enforcement departments.
The service takes a grainy, partial view, angulated 2D facial image, applies 2D-to-3D algorithms and corrects the pose of the face, and makes it ID-Ready for most any facial recognition system.
“ID Ready essentially takes a bad image and makes a mugshot out of it,” said Paul Schuepp, chief executive officer of Animetrics.
Most facial recognition systems require photos be a frontal view of a face in order to make a positive match. However, most photos studied by law enforcement are of faces that are rotated, “off pose” and are captured by low resolution video security cameras or long distance telephoto surveillance cameras.
“This type of uncontrolled imagery renders face recognition systems impractical because of the poor matching results, if results occur at all,” says Schuepp.
Here’s how the system works: law enforcement personnel upload a 2D photo to Animetrics servers at id.ready.animetrics.com and the ID Ready system applies facial feature point detection (eyes, nose tip, mouth, etc.) to accurately find the face and specify the parts Fine-tuning is possible by the user positioning three red crosshairs over both eyes and tip of the nose.
From there a 3D model is created and a new 2D resultant image that is pose-corrected to zero for facial pitch, yaw, and roll along the x, y and z axis.
ID Ready automatically eliminates any occlusions by using a proprietary symmetric blending algorithm. Users may choose to show the occlusions, which let you toggle between the mirror image view and the actual view of the rotated face, which may include the non-visible part of the angulated face from the original 2D image.
Both versions of the photo can be downloaded as .jpg images for use in any facial recognition system, including Animetrics’ FaceR Identity Management Solution (FIMS).
All network communication with id.ready.animetrics.com is encrypted over a secure SSL channel. Images uploaded to the system are automatically deleted within two hours. Further, all 3D generated face files are deleted from Animetrics’ servers within two hours.
ID Ready is geared toward smaller police departments who lack the resources to invest in their own facial recognition systems or facial analysis tools such as Animetrics ForensicaGPS™. Setting up an account is free, and there are no licensing fees. Animetrics is offering a free trial for five images. There are three pricing tiers:
- Pay as you go: unlimited images normalized, priced at $9 per image
- Monthly subscription: $69 per month (renewed automatically unless cancelled) for 50 images, after which customers are billed $9 per image
- Monthly Prepaid: $599 a year for up to 50 images a month, an annual savings of $230 over the monthly option
- Call Animetrics for special qualified law enforcement discounts.
About Animetrics
Headquartered in Conway, N.H., Animetrics is a leading developer of advanced face recognition applications and face identity management solutions, which are driving market acceptance of next generation facial biometrics in government, homeland security and law enforcement. Animetrics’ patented technology features FACEngine®, the advanced facial recognition engine behind all of Animetrics’ facial biometric solutions. FACEngine dynamically renders accurate and useful 3D avatars from 2D images and video, even if the facial images are not “static” or “straight on.” Animetrics’ technology also features FIMS™ Cloud, the first come-to-market, cloud-based web facial identity management solution for fast accurate search, retrieval, analysis and storage of facial images enabling the fast and precise facial recognition across a broad range of operating conditions and deployment environments. Animetrics products include face recognition and identity management applications called FaceR™ - FaceR MobileID, FaceR CredentialME and its FaceR Identity Management Solution; an investigative facial identity comparison application, ForensicaGPS™: and a face recognition SDK for application developers. For more information, visit Animetrics.com.
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