Facing up to faces

Have you ever wondered if it would be possible to, one day, have robots that could understand our emotions and intentions in order to then help us carry out everyday tasks? Do you know how it is possible that we can recognise, describe and understand faces?

Computer Science research based around faces is giving possible answers to these questions, along with other promising opportunities. It's a very active and interesting field as researchers have different views and methods behind how faces could be processed.

Read on to learn more about faces and learn about both how machines learn to recognise faces and how you learn and perceive them too. Issue 13 of the CS4FN magazine has lots more on the facial perception topic area. Download the pdf of issue 13 from here. You can also find out more about machines that learn in general in our special area on Machine Learning.