Facial recognition technology is about to witness rapid growth in the coming years, supported by a growing surveillance market, increasing government deployment and increasing applications in numerous industry sectors. A report from MarketsandMarkets projects the market to be worth US$ 6.8 billion by 2021.
But one of the important factors that companies in this sector should focus on in order to stay ahead of the competition is cross-platform operation. VisionLabs, a Russian startup is doing just that.
The company’s LUNA is a biometric data management system for cross-platform facial verification and identification in a web browser, mobile device and video stream. The company claims the product gives great flexibility to create scenarios of varying complexity for integrated facial recognition.
As part of the solution, the company provides a platform, SDK and cloud to the customers. It can be implemented on existing infrastructure and doesn’t require any special equipment – LUNA operates with simple web and IP cameras.
“VisionLabs is specialized on face recognition and developed technology which became top three technologies in the world according to the results of independent third-party face recognition engines tests: LFW and NIST,” said Alexander Khanin, CEO of VisionLabs. “All VisionLabs’ products (LUNA) based on this technology. Versatility and quality of LUNA are proven by numerous implementations across various industries.”
One of the major verticals where facial recognition is expected to become popular is the financial sector. Naturally, this sector was the main target for VisionLabs when they started out.
“We started our company with the objects’ recognition – I am an author of the first software which company started from,” Khanin said. “After 2 years we focused on the face recognition and chose the financial sector as [the one with most potential]. We focused on the faces because we’ve seen the trends, and already had some expertise in this area of science. The main task to solve in the banks at that time was antifraud. We knew that it will be faster to see the results from the usage of the system in the financial sector than in the others, and chose this industry. Now banks are using our solution for mobile authentication and recognition in mobile banks to provide services remotely, in the offices for recognition of VIP clients and service personalization, on the employees’ computers for access control and time tracking. We knew that it will be faster to see the results from the usage of the system in financial sector than in the others.”
VisionLabs currently has partners in Asia, Europe and America and is opening an office in Amsterdam with the aim of expanding its partner network.