India is witnessing a rapid emergence of facial recognition with significant potential on offer. According to recent reports, the facial recognition market across the world is tipped to rise up to USD 2.19 billion by 2019. This can be attributed to a sharp increase in criminal and terrorist activities around the world, coupled with the elevated risk of cybercrimes and online threats in the current market.
In accordance with the current market trends, facial recognition too has kept pace with advance and efficient innovations, thus becoming an all important element in the overarching mechanism of security and surveillance. This has led to various sectors such as government, commercial retail, and hospitality, among many, to drive the demand for facial recognition as an upgrade to their existing surveillance systems.
Earlier trends in the security sector showcased an inclination towards other biometric systems that were neither cost effective nor accurate in their findings. However, more and more sectors are now willing to invest increasingly in R&D to overcome this challenge by achieving a mechanism that is accurate as well as delivers results in a cost and time effective manner, thus carving a desirable market for facial recognition systems.
The newfound desirability for facial recognition systems by various sectors can also be tracked to the market’s shift from adopting a reactive approach to a proactive approach. With the increasing incidence of cybercrimes and online threats, various organisations are now looking to tackle these incidents long before they occur. Facial recognition serves as a part of that ideology by efficiently safeguarding organisations from various threats well in advance. This factor is especially efficient in the hospitality industry, hospitals, building monitoring systems, smart city, etc.
However, facial recognition still faces a host of challenges in terms of precision while the detection of facial features. Despite the innovation in technology, facial recognition, processing speed and storage of large information database are aspects where many providers are still lagging.
These challenges will be redundant, however, with an increased focus on R&D to proffer comprehensive and concise solution with enhanced precision and deliverability. The market is understandably at a nascent stage and will see tremendous advancements in the bid to become a perfect tool for surveillance. These advancements include type of algorithms which is lighting condition invariant, post invariant, robust to slight rotation of face and alignment of the face. While contemporary technologies are struggling to render desirable precision, the technologies of the future are especially focussing on this aspect through advanced algorithms and storage systems.
The latest innovations in facial recognition can be validated with the introduction of 3D and infrared images to enhance and upgrade facial detection and recognition. By substantially reducing the system’s dependency on lighting and capturing angles, 3D and infrared images implements functionality of facial recognition in a wider array of conditions, thus offering better outcomes in a short span of time.
Defence, Border Control, Homeland Security, Banking, Retail, Hospitality Industry, etc. are considered to be the main target verticals for facial recognition application. However, as the technology matures, other verticals like manufacturing and automobile may begin adapting such technologies as well.
