Face detection is a type of computer vision technology that is able to identify people’s faces within digital images. This is very easy for humans, but computers need precise instructions. The images might contain many objects that aren’t human faces, like buildings, cars, animals, and so on.
It is distinct from other computer vision technologies that involve human faces, like facial recognition, analysis, and tracking.
Facial recognition involves identifying the face in the image as belonging to person X and not person Y. It is often used for biometric purposes, like unlocking your smartphone.
Facial analysis tries to understand something about people from their facial features, like determining their age, gender, or the emotion they are displaying.
Facial tracking is mostly present in video analysis and tries to follow a face and its features (eyes, nose, and lips) from frame to frame. The most popular applications are various filters available in mobile apps like Snapchat.
All of these problems have different technological solutions. This course will focus on a traditional solution for the first challenge: face detection.