Japan is trying very hard to stop their kids from smoking. In the shops that sell cigarettes its an easier tasks because the responsibility to check ages is on the people serving. But Japan also have around 570,000 vending machines dispensing cigarettes and an age verification solution was needed for them.
In typical Japanese fashion, technology seemed to be the answer and these vending machines are being kitted out with facial recognition technology. The person buying the cigarettes must stand in front of a camera while their face is checked. The machine then uses a database of over 100,000 faces to check the person’s age. Their face is scanned for signs of age, including wrinkles and sagging skin, and if it is determined they look over 20 then the purchase is allowed.
The machines do have one fatal floor, however, which was discovered by a reporter for Sankei Sports. The recognition system can be fooled by holding up a photo of an older face, such as from a magazine. The reporter managed to get this to work with a 6-inch photo of a man in his 50s and 3-inch photo of a woman in her 30s. A 1-inch photo was not recognised.
The manufacturers of the machine, Fujitaka, are now working on a new version of the machine that will not be fooled by photographs. When this machine will be ready has not been announced, so kids will be able to take advantage of the 4,000 current generation machines in operation until then.
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You can imagine the fanfare when these machine were first installed. I’m sure they were accompanied by marketing spiel telling everyone how they would solve the problem of children buying cigarettes on the street. Then someone walks up to the machine with a magazine, holds it up in front of the camera and all that investment and technology fails.
I remember a similar story of when Microsoft first did handwriting recognition for mobile versions of Windows. They got the system working really well and went to show Bill Gates. Bill tried to write on the screen and it just wouldn’t work – all the testing of the software had been done with right-handed people where as Mr Gates is left-handed.
How true that story is someone reading this can verify, but it highlights the issue that testing of new technology is crucial. It is one area that usually gets cut back if time is short, but can really come back to haunt you if your product has a major design fault. As is the case with these vending machines, they are now just 4,000 expensive and useless age checkers if you have the write picture in your pocket.