FotoNation Face Tracker for Camera Phones

FotoNation Press Release

Advanced Software Identifies and Locks onto Faces for Automatic Cropping, Focus & Exposure

October 24, 2006, Monterey, CA,— FotoNation, (http://www.fotonation.com), a world-leading imaging and connectivity solutions company for the digital photography industry, announced today at the 6Sight Mobile Imaging Summit, FotoNation “Face Tracker™,” the world’s first face detection and tracking technology for camera phones.  FotoNation Face Tracker represents a major breakthrough in advanced digital image capture technology.  It detects the presence and position of a subject’s face at up to 30 frames per second during image capture enabling the optimal setting of exposure, focus and color balance.

At the Mobile Imaging Summit, FotoNation demonstrated simultaneous tracking of up to 8 faces on a camera phone.  Previously only available in digital still cameras, FotoNation Face Tracker is a highly portable software implementation that scales in performance according to the power of the processor used in the device. FotoNation’s demonstration featured a camera phone with face detection and tracking comparable in performance to currently shipping digital cameras.  The small footprint implementation is platform independent and was shown on both Symbian Series 60 3rd edition OS and Windows Mobile™ 5.0.

In addition to aiding in proper focus, exposure and color balance, the demonstration featured automatic image orientation, face cropping, and face thumbnail generation for use in the phone’s contact address book. 

“This is first of many new advanced imaging technologies we will be leveraging from our work with digital still cameras into the camera phone market,” said Eran Steinberg, CEO of FotoNation.

FotoNation patent-pending Face Tracker technology is available immediately for licensing.  For more information, see http://www.fotonation.com.

About FotoNation
FotoNation is a world-leading independent provider of embedded imaging and communication solutions for the digital camera industry. The company’s extensive portfolio of patented innovations includes in-camera red-eye removal technology, wireless connectivity, and face-recognition software.  Over 50 million digital cameras have been shipped with licensed FotoNation Red-Eye detection and correction technology. FotoNation develops innovative solutions, patents, and products to enhance, extend, and simplify the picture taking and sharing experience. Clients include AOL, Canon, Hewlett-Packard, Kodak, Microsoft, Nikon, Olympus, Pentax, Samsung, Sanyo, and Sony, among others.

FotoNation has won numerous awards, including the DIMA 2006 Innovative Product Award and the prestigious 2006 European IST award for its Red-Eye Detection and Correction Technology. The company makes important industry-wide contributions to the advancement of digital imaging. In 2005, FotoNation authored the industry-adopted PTP-IP Specification, which is the basis of the international camera connectivity CIPA-005/2005 standard.

For more information, see http://www.fotonation.com. 

Published: Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Reader Comments

1. That is a beautiful piece of equipment, but I can't get over the seemingly toy nature of it. Tell me, can it do wonderful stuff like this?

   Christopher Trottier at 05:54am on Thursday, October 26, 2006