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New tech from NEC uses a camera to recognize melonsSmile detection? Face recognition? Pah! Thats so last year. NECs new tech is way more exciting: Fruit recognition. Wait What?
Yes, fruit recognition. Show the camera a melon, a zucchini or any other fruit or vegetable, and it will recognize it. And no, it wont just tell you this is a melon. Instead, it will tell you which exact melon it is, where it came from and when it was grown.
This isnt magic. The camera relies on a photograph having already been taken. Then, when it sees a fruit later, it uses a combination of face recognition and fingerprint recognition technologies to ID the fruit, matching it up with anything it has seen before. It turns out that the colors and wrinkles of fruit and veg are individual enough to make the system accurate to one in a million.
But why? Tracking. Simple by snapping batches of fruits as they come off the tree, the grower, shipper and buyer can track the movements of their produce without using RFID tags. That obviously makes for cheaper, safer shipping, but what can it do for you, the fruit consumer?
Imagine you have a cellphone with NECs tech built in. Now imagine you are in a supermarket, with that phone (if youre reading this post on your phone, in a supermarket, feel free to get freaked out right around now). You could snap a photo of the banana in front of you and be instantly told where and when it comes from. In this case, its likely to be a shock, as unripened bananas store very well for many months.
The very best thing about this news, though, is the headline of the Japanese article that describes it. Where else would you find the words melon performance verification?
NEC, a technology that can identify fruits photos [MyCom Journal via Crunchgear]
See Also:
How Facial Recognition Works in Xbox Kinect
Face Recognition
HP Investigates Claims of 'Racist' Computers
