Google Glass app identifies friends by their clothing

Researchers at Duke University have demonstrated what could be the first app for Google Glassâ€"and yes, it's a little bit creepy. Dubbed InSight, the system recognizes people by the clothing they wear, so someone using Google's high-tech glasses could pick out friends in a crowd even if their backs are turned. As New Scientist reports, the system is partly funded by Google, and was demonstrated last week at a technology conference in Georgia. InSight's research paper [PDF] offers more details. The system requires friends to have a companion app on their smartphones that takes “a few opportunistic pictures” while the user is doing ordinary things, such as checking e-mail and browsing the Web. These photos create a “self-fingerprint” of the person's clothing, which can be shared with Google Glass users via Bluetooth or the Internet. At that point, Google Glass could match the clothing it sees against the system's database of self-fingerprints. The paper describes other possible methods to improve accuracy, such as such as snapping a short video to determine a person's “motion vector.” Also, once the system recognizes someone, it can add information to the fingerprint, making that person even easier to pick out in a crowd. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here