Apple is planning to include face detection capabilities in the next version of its smartphone/tablet platform, iOS 5, 9 to 5 Mac has discovered.
It is too early to tell exactly how the face recognition in iOS 5 will work, but it appears Apple plans to open it up to developers via several API controls, including a call for recognizing the position of the person’s eyes and mouth. This means that in the future we’ll be seeing iOS apps utilizing face detection from third-party developers and possibly from Apple itself.
The technology behind this feature probably comes from Polar Rose, a Swedish face recognition company, which Apple acquired in 2010.
Check out this video showcasing an augmented reality app called Recognizr, which Polar Rose co-developed.
