M$'s Kinect has trouble with seeing "dark skin".

[HopeHoops]

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/gaming.gadgets/11/04/kinect.dark.skin/index.html?hpt=Sbin

That's pretty sad. M$ releasing a product that's defective from day one? Oh, right. There's Windows in all of its flavors.

The story reminded me of one of the early voice recognition programs for the Mac. It had to be "trained". The company I worked for was based in Australia and many of the employees were natives of that country. We were roaring in laughter because the damn thing COULD NOT interpret anything they said. It didn't matter if it was "trained" by an American or an Australian, or if Americans tried to imitate an Australian accent. It understood ALL of the Americans and NONE of the Australians. We went out for beer after work that day. Work? Well, at least we got paid for it.

[ChoralScholar]

1. I heard that you just needed to turn up the lights.

All the John Munches of the world are going nuts with Microsoft Racism Conspiracies.

[HopeHoops]

3. LOL! Hell no. I don't think M$ is racist - I just think they fucked up again!

[ikri]

2. Most facial recognition systems have the same trouble

I remember a report about the (since dumped) British biometric ID card. The facial scanners had real trouble with dark skin tones and baldness, the fingerprint readers couldn't deal with calluses or scars and the retinal scanners had problems with brown eyes.

So if you were a bald building worker with dark skin & brown eyes you were pretty much fucked.

I wouldn't put the blame totally on Microsoft, the problem is inherent in all biometric systems at the moment.

[HopeHoops]

4. The best approach is black light with the "night vision" technology on camcorders.

Black is registered more as a light gray. Curiously, that then reverses the problem as very light white often is registered as black. An alternating strobe with coordinated sampling would provide full-range registering. I know the more advanced systems use techniques like this but I suppose it is a little much to ask from consumer devices.