Camera Distractors and Facial Recognition

Travis Goodspeed, Edward Huang, Bryan Kao, Curtis Bressert, Michael Brockly, Stephen Elliott

The purpose of this study was to analyze and improve upon existing camera distractors in real-world situations

to access the overall quality of, and improve upon, these existing systems. We address the current lack of

efficient security in many real-world places and scenarios. In today’s world, higher security is becoming an

increasing necessity, and our experiments suggest several possible solutions for more efficient camera

placements to better be able to capture peoples’ faces more fully, and for a longer period of time, to enhance

the environments and make them more safe, secure, and monitored if need be.

Experiments and Applications

Overview

Camera Distractors Optimized Camera Placements

4

Looked While at Keypad, 3

Looked Walking By, 7

Ignored Camera When At

Keypad, 13

Covered Camera With

Object, 1

Keypad Camera

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10

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60

70

80

90

ESPN Television Experiment

# of Looks

81

7

0 2 4 6 8 10 12

Student 1

Student 2

Student 3

Student 4

Student 5

Student 6

Time (seconds)

Rock & Roll - Iron Maiden Distractor

Tuesday 11:30am

Tuesday 1:30pm

0 2 4 6 8 10 12

Student 1

Student 2

Student 3

Time (seconds)

Classical - Bach Distractor

Tuesday 9:30am

Tuesday 3:30pm

Keypad Camera In this experiment we found that when entering

private/sensitive information, people are more likely to look away from the camera or cover it up completely.

Yet when people are not having to hide anything (passerby’s) they were more likely to look at the camera.

Noise Distractor

Overall, people are not too distracted by an instantaneous noise (a pan dropping), however when

that noise is sustained over a period of time (loud music) people are more prone to looking in that direction in

search of what it is that’s catching their attention.

ESPN Television We found that people are distracted/take notice when

relevant, recent, or newsworthy information is being put in front of them to see/watch/read on a television screen

or monitor.

1 2

3 4

For this experiment we focused on optimizing our camera placements to be able to capture both the test subject and the administrator in the same shot. It was important for us to utilize more efficient camera placements in order to capture close ups of each individual station. By doing this, it will enable us to be able to more accurately examine the details of the scenario rather than having the typical “room-wide” camera angles seen in many real-world applications today.

Males Females