Apple Is Working to Upgrade Face ID with New Heat-Mapping Technology

 Apple Is Working to Upgrade Face ID with New Heat-Mapping Technology

From in-display fingerprint sensors to advanced facial recognition technology, we have seen companies implement various forms of biometric authentication technology in phones over the years. Now, a recent patent indicates that Apple is working to improve its 3D facial recognition technology, Face ID, by enabling heat mapping for facial features.

The patent, "Inclusion Detection for Facial Recognition Procedures", states that any occlusion or blockage of facial features can be detected and assessed by a special heat-mapping camera on a device. This process will create landmark heat maps of the facial image and then compare it with the actual image of the face to determine the location of facial features such as users' eyes, nose, and mouth.

Now, traditional facial recognition systems struggle to detect and identify a face when it is blocked by some external elements such as glasses, hair, or masks. Therefore, to allow its Face ID system to detect and identify faces with any blockage, Apple is working to develop this new heat-mapping technology.

This new process may be able to detect a face and identify it for biometric authentication, while parts of it may be interrupted. This process, as noted above, will create heat maps of the surface of the face as a grid, and then compare it with the actual 3D image of the face to authorize the user to use the device.

Therefore, if this technology is integrated into future ID-enabled devices such as upcoming iPhones and iPads, it will improve the efficiency of their biometric authentication capabilities by multiple layers.

Also, since the onset of the ongoing epidemic, Face ID has become somewhat useless, as most of us often wear masks that cover our faces. Therefore, this new process of facial recognition may erase that issue and allow the Cupertino veteran to have Face ID in their future devices.