Does facial recognition tech work on people wearing masks?

Facial recognition systems have been having a hard time during the coronavirus pandemic. With people covering up half of their faces whenever they go out in public, these systems are no longer able to see all of the facial features they need to identify a person.

That’s why Rank One, a facial recognition company, has developed a new periocular recognition system. This form of identification uses only the eyes and eyebrows to identify a person. The technique is fairly accurate in controlled circumstances (when the person is directly facing the camera), with a false-positive rate of 1.5 percent. However, that rate changes to 15 percent when the person is not directly facing the camera.

According to a Medium post, Rank One has announced that it will be shipping its new periocular recognition technology to all of its current customers free of charge.