While the area of face recognition has been extensively studied in recent years, it remains a largely open problem, despite what movie and television studios would leave you to believe. Frontal, still face recognition research has seen a lot of success in recent years from any different researchers. However,the accuracy of such systems can be greatly diminished in cases such as increasing the variability of the database,occluding the face, and varying the illumination of the face. Further varying the pose of the face (yaw, pitch, and roll) and the face expression (smile, frown, etc.) adds even more complexity to the face recognition task, such as in the case of face recognition from video. In a more realistic video surveillance setting, a face recognition system should be robust to scale, pose, resolution, and occlusion as well as successfully track the face between frames. Also, a more advanced face recognition system should be able to improve the face recognition result by utilizing the information present in multiple video cameras. We approach the problem of face recognition from video in the following manner. We assume that the training data for the system consists of only still image data, such as passport photos or mugshots in a real-world system. We then transform the problem of face recognition from video to a still face recognition problem. Our research focuses on solutions to detecting, tracking and extracting face information from video frames so that they may be utilized effectively in a still face recognition system. We have developed four novel methods that assist in face recognition from video and multiple cameras. The first uses a patch-based method to handle the face recognition task when only patches, or parts, of the face are seen in a video, such as when occlusion of the face happens often. The second uses multiple cameras to fuse the recognition results of multiple cameras to improve the recognition accuracy. In the third solution, we utilize multiple overlapping video cameras to improve the face tracking result which thus improves the face recognition accuracy of the system. We additionally implement a methodology to detect and handle occlusion so that unwanted information is not used in the tracking algorithm. Finally, we introduce the average-half-face, which is shown to improve the results of still face recognition by utilizing the symmetry of the face. In one attempt to understand the use of the average-half-face in face recognition, an analysis of the effect of face symmetry on face recognition results is shown. / text

Orientador: Aparecido Nilceu Elias / Banca: Agma Juci Machado Traina / Banca: Wilson Massashiro Yonezawa / Resumo: Nos últimos anos tem sido observado um crescimento exponencial na oferta de cursos a distância realizados pela Internet, decorrente de suas vantagens e características (menores custos de distribuição e atualização de conteúdo, gerenciamento de grandes turmas, aprendizado assíncrono e geograficamente independente, etc.), bem como de sua regulamentação e apoio governamental. Entretanto, a falta de mecanismos eficazes para assegurar a autenticação dos alunos neste tipo de ambiente é apontada como uma séria deficiência, tanto no acesso ao sistema quanto durante a participação do usuário nas atividades do curso. Atualmente, a autenticação baseada em senhas continua predominante. Porém, estudos têm sido conduzidos sobre possíveis aplicações da Biometria para autenticação em ambientes Web. Com a popularização e conseqüente barateamento de hardware habilitado para coleta biométrica (como webcams, microfone e leitores de impressão digital embutidos), a Biometria passa a ser considerada uma forma segura e viável de autenticação remota de indivíduos em aplicações Web. Baseado nisso, este trabalho propõe uma arquitetura distribuída para um ambiente de e-Learning, explorando as propriedades de um sistema Web para a autenticação biométrica tanto no acesso ao sistema quanto de forma contínua, durante a realização do curso. Para análise desta arquitetura, é avaliada a performance de técnicas de reconhecimento de faces a partir de vídeo capturadas on-line por uma webcam em um ambiente de Internet, simulando a interação natural de um indivíduo em um sistema de e- Learning. Para este fim, foi criada uma base de dados de vídeos própria, contando com 43 indivíduos navegando e interagindo com páginas Web. Os resultados obtidos mostram que os métodos analisados, consolidados na literatura, podem ser aplicados com sucesso nesse tipo de aplicação... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: In the last years it has been observed an exponential growth in the offering of Internet-enabled distance courses, due to its advantages and features (decreased distribution and content updates costs, management of large groups of students, asynchronous and geographically independent learning) as well as its regulation and governmental support. However, the lack of effective mechanisms that assure user authentication in this sort of environment has been pointed out as a serious deficiency, both in the system logon and during user attendance in the course assignments. Currently, password based authentication still prevails. Nevertheless, studies have been carried out about possible biometric applications for Web authentication. With the popularization and resultant decreasing costs of biometric enabled devices, such as webcams, microphones and embedded fingerprint sensors, Biometrics is reconsidered as a secure and viable form of remote authentication of individuals for Web applications. Based on that, this work presents a distributed architecture for an e-Learning environment, by exploring the properties of a Web system for biometric authentication both in the system logon and in continuous monitoring, during the course attendance. For the analysis of this architecture, the performance of techniques for face recognition from video, captured on-line by a webcam in an Internet environment, is evaluated, simulating the natural interaction of an individual in an e-Learning system. For that, a private database was created, with 43 individuals browsing and interacting with Web pages. The results show that the methods analyzed, though consolidated in the literature, can be successfully applied in this kind of application, with recognition rates up to 97% in ideal conditions, with low execution times and with short amount of information transmitted between client and server, with templates sizes of about 30KB. / Mestre

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:29:40Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2009-07-27Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T20:59:56Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 penteado_be_me_sjrp.pdf: 1032009 bytes, checksum: 4cf143854132e42249128674b69ba77b (MD5) / Nos últimos anos tem sido observado um crescimento exponencial na oferta de cursos a distância realizados pela Internet, decorrente de suas vantagens e características (menores custos de distribuição e atualização de conteúdo, gerenciamento de grandes turmas, aprendizado assíncrono e geograficamente independente, etc.), bem como de sua regulamentação e apoio governamental. Entretanto, a falta de mecanismos eficazes para assegurar a autenticação dos alunos neste tipo de ambiente é apontada como uma séria deficiência, tanto no acesso ao sistema quanto durante a participação do usuário nas atividades do curso. Atualmente, a autenticação baseada em senhas continua predominante. Porém, estudos têm sido conduzidos sobre possíveis aplicações da Biometria para autenticação em ambientes Web. Com a popularização e conseqüente barateamento de hardware habilitado para coleta biométrica (como webcams, microfone e leitores de impressão digital embutidos), a Biometria passa a ser considerada uma forma segura e viável de autenticação remota de indivíduos em aplicações Web. Baseado nisso, este trabalho propõe uma arquitetura distribuída para um ambiente de e-Learning, explorando as propriedades de um sistema Web para a autenticação biométrica tanto no acesso ao sistema quanto de forma contínua, durante a realização do curso. Para análise desta arquitetura, é avaliada a performance de técnicas de reconhecimento de faces a partir de vídeo capturadas on-line por uma webcam em um ambiente de Internet, simulando a interação natural de um indivíduo em um sistema de e- Learning. Para este fim, foi criada uma base de dados de vídeos própria, contando com 43 indivíduos navegando e interagindo com páginas Web. Os resultados obtidos mostram que os métodos analisados, consolidados na literatura, podem ser aplicados com sucesso nesse tipo de aplicação... / In the last years it has been observed an exponential growth in the offering of Internet-enabled distance courses, due to its advantages and features (decreased distribution and content updates costs, management of large groups of students, asynchronous and geographically independent learning) as well as its regulation and governmental support. However, the lack of effective mechanisms that assure user authentication in this sort of environment has been pointed out as a serious deficiency, both in the system logon and during user attendance in the course assignments. Currently, password based authentication still prevails. Nevertheless, studies have been carried out about possible biometric applications for Web authentication. With the popularization and resultant decreasing costs of biometric enabled devices, such as webcams, microphones and embedded fingerprint sensors, Biometrics is reconsidered as a secure and viable form of remote authentication of individuals for Web applications. Based on that, this work presents a distributed architecture for an e-Learning environment, by exploring the properties of a Web system for biometric authentication both in the system logon and in continuous monitoring, during the course attendance. For the analysis of this architecture, the performance of techniques for face recognition from video, captured on-line by a webcam in an Internet environment, is evaluated, simulating the natural interaction of an individual in an e-Learning system. For that, a private database was created, with 43 individuals browsing and interacting with Web pages. The results show that the methods analyzed, though consolidated in the literature, can be successfully applied in this kind of application, with recognition rates up to 97% in ideal conditions, with low execution times and with short amount of information transmitted between client and server, with templates sizes of about 30KB.