Plug & Play Camera for a Covid-World: Frictionless elevated body temperature detection and access control
Trueface partners with iryx to deliver contactless temperature checks, frictionless identity verification, and spoof detection in a single camera.
Living through a global pandemic has certainly been an interesting experience; it has demonstrated the essence of human resilience. We have been quick to adapt, allowing us to return to a pseudo-normal life. One of the things I now commonly see is businesses screening their patrons for Covid using a handheld temperature gun. Although this is a step in the right direction, there are a few shortcomings with this approach. The first is that this process is highly inefficient. Although this manual form of screening works well enough for small businesses like barbershops, it quickly breaks down in situations where you need to process a large volume of people such as in an airport. Second, this approach exposes the person administering the screening to potentially sick individuals. These risks are needless and can be avoided with the right technology.
Trueface has partnered with iryx to develop automated elevated body temperature screening technology that ensures we make it through this pandemic safely. Iryx is an American-based company that specializes in AI-enabled thermal cameras. Their flagship thermal camera, the Indoor Mini, is smaller than a baseball, yet features an advanced onboard computer vision engine that can perform machine learning inference at the edge.
Leveraging the onboard machine learning engine, Trueface has been able to run many of its top-tier computer vision models directly onboard the camera in real-time. The Trueface Elevated Body Temperature solution uses machine learning to detect the location of the inner canthus of the eye then extracts the maximum temperature in this region. Several studies have shown that the inner canthus is the most accurate way to frictionlessly measure body temperature from a thermal image and its output correlates well to internal body temperature.
The most reliable, repeatable and fastest method was the inner canthus of the eye in frontal facial thermal images. It presented good correlation with current ‘clinical gold standard tympanic thermometer and debatable forehead methods.
The Trueface Elevated Body Temperature (EBT) solution is truly plug and play, and requires zero coding knowledge to set up and get started. Simply plug the Power over Ethernet (PoE) cable into the camera and the solution is ready.
For those wanting to delve a bit deeper and take advantage of more features, Trueface offers a rich developer API for the EBT solution. This includes a configuration server as well as a websocket that streams information such as the temperature, face mask label, and liveness information. Moreover, the API can be used to run Trueface’s face recognition models directly on the camera. This is an ideal solution for enterprises who require a frictionless method to not only verify the identities of those entering its premises but also certify they do not have an elevated temperature. This solution also scales easily, as the processing is performed directly on the camera itself. There’s no need to pay for beefy servers as more cameras are added.
One of the most useful features accessible from the developer API is the built-in spoof detection which comes with the Trueface EBT solution. All face recognition systems are susceptible to presentation attacks, meaning a malicious actor could present a physical picture or a phone with a face image to the camera, impersonating a different identity in order to gain access to a digital or physical environment. While rare, presentation attacks are more common in remote access locations where implementing traditional security measures have not been realistic in the past. The Trueface EBT solution easily detects such attacks.
The passive thermal spoof detection approach we take is superior to standard conventional visual-based approaches. While passive visual-based approaches may look for the screen door effect or other spoof artifacts, the thermal approach compares the temperature profile of the detected face to the expected temperature profile of a human face. Simply put, it is much more difficult to spoof this sort of system.
We recently pushed out V2.XX of the EBT solution, which comes paired with a firmware upgrade for the iryx camera. This new version adds a Trueface web interface which can be used for seamlessly installing and managing the Trueface EBT application.
In our ever-evolving COVID world, contactless capabilities have become imperative for enterprises and government agencies alike. From frictionless temperature measurement to identity verification to spoof detection, the iryx+Trueface solution is well-equipped to answer the dynamic requirements of today’s uncertain landscape.
