Real-time face detection and tracking on mobile phones for criminal detection

In this paper a criminal detection framework that could help policemen to recognize the face of a criminal or a suspect is proposed. The framework is a client-server video based face recognition surveillance in the real-time. The framework applies face detection and tracking using Android mobile devices at the client side and video based face recognition at the server side. This paper focuses on the development of the client side of the proposed framework, face detection and tracking using Android mobile devices. For the face detection stage, robust Viola-Jones algorithm that is not affected by illuminations is used. The face tracking stage is based on Optical Flow algorithm. Optical Flow is implemented in the proposed framework with two feature extraction methods, Fast Corner Features, and Regular Features. The proposed face detection and tracking is implemented using Android studio and OpenCV library, and tested using Sony Xperia Z2 Android 5.1 Lollipop Smartphone. Experiments show that face tracking using Optical Flow with Regular Features achieves a higher level of accuracy and efficiency than Optical Flow with Fast Corner Features.