Past, Present, and Future of Face Recognition

A preprint paper "Past, Present, and Future of Face Recognition: A Review" by Insaf Adjabi, Abdeldjalil Ouahabi, Amir Benzaoui, and Abdelmalik Taleb-Ahmed from University of Bouira, Algeria, University of Tours, France, and University of Valenciennes, France, presents the challenges for the facial recognition algorithms:

"Face recognition is one of the most active research fields of computer vision and pattern recognition, with many practical and commercial applications including identification, access control, forensics, and human-computer interactions. Significant methods, algorithms, approaches, and databases have been proposed over recent years to study constrained and unconstrained face recognition. 2D approaches reached some degree of maturity and reported very high rates of recognition. This performance is achieved in controlled environments where the acquisition parameters are controlled, such as lighting, angle of view, and distance between the camera-subject. However, if the ambient conditions (e.g., lighting) or the facial appearance (e.g., pose or facial expression) change, this performance will degrade dramatically. 3D approaches were proposed as an alternative solution to the problems mentioned above. The advantage of 3D data lies in its invariance to pose and lighting conditions, which has enhanced recognition systems efficiency. 3D data, however, is somewhat sensitive to changes in facial expressions. This review presents the history of face recognition technology, the current state-of-the-art methodologies, and future directions."