Google patents facial expression authentication; use a frown to unlock your phone

Google Inc. has applied for a patent for Android devices that will require you to make facial movements like a smile, frown, wink, or even protruding your tongue to unlock your phone instead of the traditional password input.

The face unlock was initially introduced on Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich but was later discovered that people use photographs to fool the device instead of a real person showing face.

The tech has now been taken a notch further. The Android phone will now require you to record a ‘landmark video’ of the facial expressions you want to use. This will be done through the front camera of the mobile phone.

When you want to unlock the phone, you’ll need to replicate the motions in the landmark video. Furthermore, the phone can require any order of the motions according to how many motions are saved in the video for instance, a smile, a wink, then a smile.

Google has admitted though that the video can still be tricked with very good video editing skills which will produce a particular face motion. It has however said that this could be prevented by equipping the device with light of different colours. The light is emitted into the user’s face to make sure that a human is really making the gestures.

The United States Patent (patent number: 8,457,367) was filed in June 26, 2012 and was approved on June 4, 2013. The second claim which is the method of claim 1 states: “The method of claim 1, further comprising: prompting the user to perform a predetermined facial gesture; determining whether the detected facial gesture matches the predetermined facial gesture;  if the detected facial gesture does not match the predetermined facial gesture, denying authentication to the user with respect to accessing one or more functionalities controlled by the computing device; and if the detected facial gesture matches the predetermined facial gesture, granting authentication to the user with respect to accessing one or more functionalities controlled by the computing device.”

All these steps are being taken in a bid to replace traditional passwords which analysts have claimed is not safe enough for our devices from intruders. Google has not said anything about the time this will be utilized in Android devices.

Posted in Gadgets, Google