James and Steve are colleague and their job responsibility demands them to switch their workstations more often.
Every time Steve has to use James’ laptop, he has to log-in to authenticate himself. Same goes for James.
Moreover, whenever Steve returns to his workstation after having a cup of coffee, a discussion or the like, he has to unlock his laptop by entering his password. Now this has at least two problems.
First, the password based authentication methods are not reliable and are passé. Second, frequent authentication is annoying as hell.
Don’t you think that there should be a solution for the problems mentioned above? A solution where Steve doesn’t have to authenticate himself while without compromising with the security?
The above statement looks contradictory but, a recent patent application filed by Google says that they have a similar solution.
According to the patent application, Google may introduce facial recognition login in laptops or better to say Chromebooks that will make password based log-in in laptops obsolete.
Apart from providing facial recognition login, this has lots of other cool features. I will be sharing those features later with you in this post.
Let’s first find out how the facial recognition login will work in Chromebooks.
How Google’s Facial Recognition Login in Chromebook Works?
In order to provide better facial recognition, the webcam of your laptop takes multiple images of your face captured from different angles.
The user recognizer extracts different information of your face from these images. It saves size and shape of your eyes, nose, cheekbones, jaw, the relative position of eyes and your nose.
An identity of your face will be generated based on this information. And it will be used in authentication process.
So next time when you have to log in, you will sit in front of your laptop. The webcam and the login manager will identify your face and you will gain an access without any efforts.
However, Google knows that sometimes our webcam can stop working. And in such instances, the log-in manager will switch to password based authentication.
Other Cool Feature of Facial Recognition Login Software of Google
After studying the patent, I felt that Google is not providing a facial recognition based login only but, playing with the camera of Chromebook.
Now you may be thinking that how? Let’s find out.
Capturing Thefties:
There are instances where an unauthorized person makes unsuccessful attempts to use your laptop by entering incorrect username and password.
In such cases, your laptop captures thefties of that person to show you once you log-in. Apart from that, It can also deliver the Thefties to your email also. Sending emails is handy when you are away from your system for a long time.
Locking and Unlocking Laptop Automatically:
The camera has a camera detection range of 2 meters. You can also adjust it manually according to your needs. Whenever you will go beyond the camera detection range or will walk away from your system. The camera will send this information to the login manager that locks your laptop in turn.
In the same fashion, when you approach your laptop and enter into the camera detection range , the laptop gets unlocked as soon you sit in front of it.
So now when Steve will return to his workstation after having a discussion or a cup of coffee, the laptop will detect his presence.
And as soon as he will sit, an immediate access will be provided, without him entering any username and password.
Power Saving:-
It happens sometime when we fall asleep after working on our laptops for hours or while watching a movie during late nights. This software of Google also has an attention monitor for such instances.
Whenever you look away from your laptop for a considerable amount of time, it sends your laptop to sleep mode and later to power off state.
The future Chromebooks will have some advanced technology that will surely change the shape of laptops. Apparently, Google is the master of software and in no time it will be the master of products as well.
Google’s software ability has reached to a point where it can make their wallet working even in offline mode.