Psychologists from the University of Stirling will play an important role in a major study to develop next generation face recognition technology.
The five-year project, funded by the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council, will bring university research teams from across the UK together with the Home Office and industry specialists.
They will identify how face recognition can improve worldwide security. Scientists from Stirling university will offer expertise on face perception.
The University of Stirling’s psychologist Professor Peter Hancock will lead the team as they investigate how humans recognise familiar faces.
Hancock said: "Humans are surprisingly poor at identifying faces they don’t know, even professionals such as passport controllers have difficulty matching people to their photographs.
"But we are much better than machines at recognising familiar faces and the challenge we are undertaking is to gain an understanding of what the process is that allows us to do this."
The project, which begins in January, will also look at the technology’s privacy implications.
Global security is the main driver for the the study, but it is expected that there will also be commercial benefits.
The project will also include researchers from the University of Surrey, Imperial College London, international experts in face biometrics and video analysis, the Home Office, the BBC and industry groups including IBM.
