Publication

Interactive-Time Vision: Face Recognition as a Visual Behavior

Sept. 1, 1991

Groups

Matthew A. Turk

Abstract

This thesis describes a vision system which performs face recognition as a specialpurpose visual task, or “visual behavior”. In addition to performing experiments using stored face images digitized under a range of imaging conditions, I have implemented face recognition in a near-real-time (or “interactive-time”) computer system which locates and tracks a subject’s head and then recognize the person by comparing characteristics of the face to those of known individuals. The computational approach of this system is motivated by both biology and information theory, as well as by the practical requirements of interactive-time performance and accuracy. The face recognition problem is treated as an intrinsically two-dimensional recognition problem, taking advantage of the fact that faces are normally upright and thus may be described by a small set of 2-D characteristic views. Each view is represented by a set of “eigenfaces” which are the significant eigenvectors (principal components) of the set of known faces. They form a holistic representation and do not necessarily correspond to individual features such as eyes, ears, and noses. This approach provides for the ability to learn and later recognize new faces in an unsupervised manner. In addition to face recognition, I explore other visual behaviors in the domain of human-computer interaction.

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