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[on:]

Hi guys,

I am looking for a camera module with on-board face detection, so I can just read the face detection parameters directly without having to do all the image processing in the Arduino.

Any suggestions?

~Frank

[Reply #1 on:]

think you need a high end digital camera for that.
HOw much face do you want to detect?
- outline only
- more details eyes mouth nose ears
- or detailed details, smiling mouth, wiggling ears etc.

[Reply #2 on:]

You're not going to find such a thing (or if you do, it won't be cheap); the closest thing I can think of that does something like that (object tracking) would be a CMUCAM or AVRCAM device; and those only do very basic tracking of objects. Neither are very inexpensive either (actually, I'm not even sure you can buy and AVRCAM - you might have to build it yourself). There's also the Nootropic Design Video Experimenter, but while cheap, you have to pretty much dedicate an Arduino to it (and even then you'll only get basic tracking with it). Full-on face tracking is anything but easy, so if you found a camera that did it, it's going to have a bit more than a little CPU power in it, coupled with some fancy on-board AI software - neither of which would translate into the word "inexpensive" (I'd expect $500.00 USD at minimum).

The only way you could do it cheaper would be to get a nice high-res web-camera, then tie that to a PC with RoboRealm or OpenCV on the backend (though you're still looking at more than a bit of money in the end, even if you used a BeagleBoard).

[Reply #3 on:]

Yes, from what I've also seen, most hobbyist level facial recognition is done
using Roborealm or OpenCV software running on a PC, as indicated. For a
small robot/system, probably the easiest thing to do would be to get a
small Windows or Linux netbook computer. [that's actually what I plan
to do to add computer vision to my robot someday].

Another possibility is the Surveyor vision system, but that's fairly
expensive.

http://surveyor.com/

[Reply #4 on:]

without having to do all the image processing in the Arduino.

You can't do the image processing in the arduino, not enough memory, not enough processing power.

[Reply #5 on:]

I have seen $100 cameras able to detect faces. Would it not be possible to hook up such a camera or its chip to an arduino?

[Reply #6 on:]

Would it not be possible to hook up such a camera or its chip to an arduino?

Possible but I very much doubt it. The OP wanted to extract the face detection parameters for some undisclosed reason. These happen inside the processor attached to the camera. If the code in the processor is not designed to output such information short of hacking the camera code you can't get it out.

[Reply #7 on:]

without having to do all the image processing in the Arduino.

You can't do the image processing in the arduino, not enough memory, not enough processing power.

This is one of my friend's project using arduino, and it uses some software to do the face recognition/image processing.
Might be it will help you to reduce the cost!