This Guyanese developer invents facial recognition system that unlocks doors

Sean Singh is a Guyanese tech developer whose breathtaking invention – facial recognition system – unlocks doors.

A graduate of the University of Guyana, Singh began working on a prototype for the facial recognition security system in 2018, STEM Caribbean reported.

Singh, according to the outlet, deployed the knowledge he acquired from machine learning to develop the prototype incorporating object detection – a technology used in computers to identify objects, such as vehicles, or even faces in an image.

“The first prototype used an approach called object detection. This involved gathering numerous data of the individual faces that I wanted to train the model on,” Singh told STEM Caribbean.

“Everyone at the office pitched in by adding some of their photos to a Google photo album. Then I would have to spend countless hours labeling these images and assigning a name to them,” he added.

The process worked and the algorithm recognized the faces with decent accuracy. That notwithstanding, the approach was “very inefficient,” forcing Singh to suspend the project for a couple of months.

Singh would resume work on the project at the end of 2019, according to STEM Caribbean. After a painstaking research, Singh resolved a different approach would suffice.

“After reading a few research papers and combing the World Wide Web, for example, I found an opensource project that implemented a framework developed by the developers over at Facebook (yes, there is no shame in standing on the shoulders of giants). 

“It was with this and some custom tweaking, I was able to once again produce another facial recognition prototype,” he said.

Singh is one of the technology developers at V75 Inc. In a video published by the company on YouTube in January, the fascinating technology is tested by founder Eldon Marks followed by other team members.

V75 Inc. is an information technology company based in Guyana which develops information systems and provides conversational artificial intelligence engineering solutions for businesses. The company also supports the development of budding tech developers in Guyana by creating opportunities such as internships and paid apprenticeship programs through Nexus Hub Inc., a non-profit run by the company.

Singh’s goal is to improve on his invention and customize it to one’s liking. “I plan to continue work on improving this system and eventually creating a useful product out of it,” he said.