Omron Announces 'OKAO Vision Face Recognition Sensor' for Mobile Phones
OMRON Corporation, a global leader in automation, sensing and control technology, has announced “OKAO Vision Face Recognition Sensor”, a world first* in face recognition technology which can be implemented in PDAs, mobile phones or other mobile devices with a camera function. The ability to recognize and verify the authenticity of the user through face recognition is meant to contribute to greater security and safety for mobile devices, and the information they contain, in the future. The technology will be on show at the “Security Show Japan 2005”, which will be held at the Tokyo Big Site from March 2nd to March 4th, 2005.

In today’s program, we speak with Yutaka Nakamae from Panasonic’s Corporate External Relations Group who met with us during last fall’s CEATEC consumer electronics show in Tokyo. While there’s plenty of eye candy, including Panny’s 900iV (released in mid-2004), some skin-able models to please those who can’t decide on their favorite color and the very cool GSM X700 (now on sale in Europe), the real intelligence relates to finding our who’s boss in the carrier/manufacturer relationship (Hint: Who owns the customer?). Today’s proggy is not only a fun one — showing some great cellys from the October CEATEC show — but it also reconfirms the reality of the relationship between cell-phone makers and cellular operators in Japan — in this case, Panasonic and DoCoMo.