Academics have designed a new facial recognition system that relies on the way light patterns reflect off the human face to distinguish between individuals, and on the speed with which the system reads the reflected light to detect forgery attempts.
The new system is named Face Flashing, and besides a camera, it also works in connection with an LCD screen, may it be a computer's display, a phone's screen, or an authentication panel at the entry of a secure location.
How Face Flashing works
In Face Flashing, the role of the LCD screen is to display what's known as a challenge. This challenge can take the form of a singular image shown on the screen or a quick succession of images or solid colors.
The role of the challenge is to emit a light pattern at the user's face. This emitted light reflects on the user's face —in the same way for each user, but different from person to person.
A nearby camera records how this light reflects off the person's face, and passes the data to an internal component known as the liveliness detection module, and then to the actual facial recognition feature.
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