November 07, 2006
Putting Your Best Face Forward
If what Ken Camp is saying in Advances in 3G mobile solutions include facial recognition in video, you might want to make sure that you wake up on the right side of the bed. Imagine: your hair is mess, you're bleary-eyed, and depending on your inclination, your face is either unshaven or unmade. And guess what? Your mobile phone doesn't recognize you and won't let you place a call. Damn biometric machines. Always thinking for themselves and getting it wrong.
Of course, I'm exaggerating. You don't have to worry about video calling etiquette for video-based facial authentication. But there are experiments going on that use facial biometrics to control functions on a mobile phone. This includes more important functionality such as contactless payment, access control, and identification. The biggest problem I see with this, which Ken also points out, is environmental conditions (such as darkness) that might give an inaccurate biometric and thus lock you out. It'll probably take a few years for DoCoMo and others to work these issues out. But if they succeed, we'll certainly live in interesting mobile times.
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