Tag: Glass

Dubai police intend to equip detectives with Google’s wearable tech.

As part of Dubai’s plan to make its police force one of the “smartest in the world” by the year 2018, the emirate’s police department wants to provide beat officers and eventually detectives with Google Glass, enabling its law enforcement officers to run customized facial recognition software.

Facial recognition technology could help fight crime.

According to Reuters, a police spokesperson from the most populous city and emirate in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), confirmed that Dubai police developed the software and would permit a link between a database of wanted people and the wearer. Essentially, as soon as the wearable device recognizes a suspect via the facial recognition technology, the wearer of the optical head-mounted display is alerted.

Colonel Khalid Naser Al Rzooqi, the director general of Dubai police, informed 7DayinDubai that “The software that we developed internally enables us to connect a database of wanted people with the glass.” He added that “Once the glass recognizes the suspect based on a face print, it will give an alert to the officer wearing it.”

The gadget featuring the software is to be introduced gradually in phases. The initial phase would focus on combating traffic violations and tracking vehicles that are suspected to have been involved in driving offenses. The second phase would involve having the technology issued to detectives.

Google Glass isn’t cheap but Dubai is willing to spare no expense when it comes to its police force.

Glass is a costly gadget that sells for $1,500 in the United States. This makes the device far out of the affordable range for the average consumer. However, Dubai is determined to equip its law enforcement with the device. In addition, more businesses are beginning to warm to the idea of using this innovative wearable, which is also beginning to be used in hospitals.

Despite many people being worried about their privacy when Google Glass is worn in public, as the concern is a Glass user could be secretly taking photos or videoing a person without their consent, if policemen were to wear it, the purpose would be to help officers collect information during an investigation.

A version of the CamFind app from Image Searcher has been developed for the wearable device.

The startup’s image recognition app has been designed to work with Google Glass, enabling a wearer of the optical head-mounted display to look at something and CamFind will identify whatever the user may be looking at within seconds.

CamFind utilizes AI for image recognition.

The visual search app recognizes images by using artificial intelligence (AI). It combines this technology with crowdsourcing, giving humans the ability to correct the identification of images.

In an exclusive interview with VentureBeat, the CEO of Image Searcher, Dominik Mazur, said that in as little as 12 seconds, CamFind is capable of generating an accurate answer for an image query and it can take mere milliseconds if the computer vision recognizes it on the first try.

Brad Folkens, the chief technology officer said that “It really takes the friction out of the process.” Folkens added that “When we started this, we found that mobile search was broken. We make it so you can look at something and then get an answer. When you can do it fast, it turns from a novelty into a utility.”

Folkens did say that while 12 seconds might seem like a long time to wait for an answer when people have become accustomed to wanting immediate results, it is much faster than any other alternative available to users while they are on the go. For instance, the visual search app can identify clothing brands or shoe brands. Therefore, if a Google Glass wearer liked the shoes someone else was wearing, they could find out the brand. In the future, when Glass steps into the e-commerce space, consumers will be able to buy what they see when they are inspired to do so.

The CamFind Google Glass app is likely to succeed where Google Goggles failed.

A while back, Google had previously developed a smartphone app called Google Goggles, which allowed users to take a picture of a wine bottle and obtain useful information about it. However, this app did not work most of the time and the app was taken down by Google.

It is not yet known when the CamFind app will be available for Google Glass, but Image Searcher has submitted its application for approval.