Enhancing Face Recognition with Location Information

Knowing the location of different sensed user tokens such as a Bluetooth-enabled mobile phone or RFID badge helps to verify the identity of the user. Co-location of the tokens increases the confidence that the user is at a certain location whereas conflicting locations decreases this confidence. Thus location information can be used to authenticate the user. Instead of sensing user tokens viawireless communication channels, face detection and recognition can be used as well. The location of the webcam detecting the user can be fused with location information obtained from other user identity tokens. Together with the face recognition output, the fused location information of the sensed identity tokens results in an enhancement of the user identification process. This approach proves very accurate in terms of a reduction of the FAR and FRR of the face recognition, allows for more relaxed posing of the user for reasonably correct face recognition, and provides user- friendliness as users don't have to explicitly enter credentials anymore in order to authenticate themselves. The latter aspect makes the approach suitable for pervasive and ubiquitous computing environments.