Strategic Communications and Marketing News Bureau

Step right up, let the computer look at your face and tell you your age

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – People who hope to keep their age a secret won’t want to go near a computer running this software.

In addition to performing tasks such as security control and surveillance monitoring, age-estimation software also could be used for electronic customer relationship management or to target specific audiences with advertising, said Thomas S. Huang, the William L. Everitt Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the U. of I.

In addition to performing tasks such as security control and surveillance monitoring, age-estimation software also could be used for electronic customer relationship management or to target specific audiences with advertising, said Thomas S. Huang, the William L. Everitt Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the U. of I.

Like an age-guesser at a carnival, computer software being developed at the University of Illinois can fairly accurately estimate a person’s age. But, unlike age-guessers, who can view a person’s body, the software works by examining only the person’s face.

“Age-estimation software is useful in applications where you don’t need to specifically identify someone, such as a government employee, but would like to know their age,” said Thomas S. Huang, the William L. Everitt Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the U. of I.

For example, age-recognition algorithms could stop underage drinkers from entering bars, prevent minors from purchasing tobacco products from vending machines, and deny children access to adult Web sites, said Huang, who leads the Image Formation and Processing group at the university’s Beckman Institute.

Estimating someone’s age is not an easy task, even for a computer. That’s partly because the aging process is determined not only by a person’s genetic makeup, but by many other factors as well, including health, location and living conditions.

“Human faces do convey a significant amount of information, however, and provide important visual cues for estimating age,” Huang said. “Facial attributes, such as expression, gender and ethnic origin, play a crucial role in our image analysis.”

Consisting of three modules – face detection, discriminative manifold learning, and multiple linear regression – the researchers’ age-estimation software was trained on a database containing photos of 1,600 faces.

The software can estimate ages from 1 year to 93 years. The software’s accuracy ranges from about 50 percent when estimating ages to within 5 years, to more than 80 percent when estimating ages to within 10 years. The accuracy can be improved by additional training on larger databases of faces, Huang said.

In addition to performing tasks such as security control and surveillance monitoring, age-estimation software also could be used for electronic customer relationship management.

For example, a camera snapping photos of customers could collect demographic data – such as how many adult men and women buy burgers, or what percentage of teenagers purchase a particular soft drink.

Or, combined with algorithms that identify a person’s sex, age-estimation software could help target specific audiences for specific advertisements. For example, a store display might advertise a new automobile or boat as a man walks by, or new clothing or cosmetics as a woman walks by.

“All of this can be done without violating anyone’s privacy,” Huang said. “Our software does not identify specific individuals. It just estimates their ages.”

Huang is affiliated with the university’s Center for Advanced Study, Coordinated Science Laboratory, Information Trust Institute, and department of computer science.

Funding was provided by the National Science Foundation and the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity. The researchers published their findings in the two journals IEEE Transactions on Multimedia and IEEE Transactions on Image Processing in 2008.

 

Editor’s note: To reach Thomas Huang, call 217-244-1638; e-mail: thuang1@illinois.edu.

Read Next

Life sciences Photo of Michael Ward standing in tall grass on a riverbank.

How are migrating wild birds affected by H5N1 infection in the U.S.?

Each spring, roughly 3.5 billion wild birds migrate from their warm winter havens to their breeding grounds across North America, eating insects, distributing plant seeds and providing a variety of other ecosystem services to stopping sites along the way. Some also carry diseases like avian influenza, a worry for agricultural, environmental and public health authorities. […]

Announcements Marcelo Garcia, professor of civil and environmental engineering at The Grainger College of Engineering.

Illinois faculty member elected to National Academy of Engineering

Champaign, Ill. — Marcelo Garcia, a professor of civil and environmental engineering in The Grainger College of Engineering, has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

Social sciences Male and female student embracing on the quad with flowering redbud tree and the ACES library in the background. Photo by Michelle Hassel

Dating is not broken, but the trajectories of relationships have changed

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — According to some popular culture writers and online posts by discouraged singles lamenting their inability to find romantic partners, dating is “broken,” fractured by the social isolation created by technology, pandemic lockdowns and potential partners’ unrealistic expectations. Yet two studies of college students conducted a decade apart found that their ideas about […]

Strategic Communications and Marketing News Bureau

507 E. Green St
MC-426
Champaign, IL 61820

Email: stratcom@illinois.edu

Phone (217) 333-5010