Development of Pose-Invariant Face Recognition System for Mobile Robot Applications

In this paper, we present a new approach to detect and recognize human face in the image from vision camera equipped on the mobile robot platform. Due to the mobility of camera platform, obtained facial image is small and pose-various. For this condition, new algorithm should cope with these constraints and can detect and recognize face in nearly real time. In detection step, ‘coarse to fine’ detection strategy is used. Firstly, region boundary including face is roughly located by dual ellipse templates of facial color and on this region, the locations of three main facial features- two eyes and mouth-are estimated. For this, simplified facial feature maps using characteristic chrominance are made out and candidate pixels are segmented as eye or mouth pixels group. These candidate facial features are verified whether the length and orientation of feature pairs are suitable for face geometry. In recognition step, pseudo-convex hull area of gray face image is defined which area includes feature triangle connecting two eyes and mouth. And random lattice line set are composed and laid on this convex hull area, and then 2D appearance of this area is represented. From these procedures, facial information of detected face is obtained and face DB images are similarly processed for each person class. Based on facial information of these areas, distance measure of match of lattice lines is calculated and face image is recognized using this measure as a classifier. This proposed detection and recognition algorithms overcome the constraints of previous approach [15], make real-time face detection and recognition possible, and guarantee the correct recognition irregardless of some pose variation of face. The usefulness at mobile robot application is demonstrated.