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Taking the face recognition industry to new heights is XID Technologies' goal. And their pioneering efforts in the industry have certainly made them the leader of the pack.
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Put your money where your mouth is - that's a mantra that Dr Roberto Mariani, Chief Technology Officer and founder of face synthesis and recognition pioneer XID Technologies firmly believes in. "Prior to securing outside funding, the founding team made significant personal investment in the company. That helped us to gain the faith and belief of outside investors," he recalled.
With the help of three angel investors, XID was capitalised and became fully operational in April 2003 with an initial capital outlay of only US$450,000, enough to operate for a year under stringent capital restrictions. "We wanted to allocate our funds to transform technology into products that would generate revenues before a second, larger round of funding that would inevitably be necessary for international expansion and to happen. We also applied a policy of low salaries for the founders in order to maintain an affordable burn rate. I will always be grateful to my friends for their trust and belief in XID from the very early stages," said Dr Mariani.
The development of the technology behind face synthesis in face recognition by XID is something that is close to Dr Mariani's heart - he was, in fact, its inventor. In 1997, after obtaining his PhD in Computer Vision from the Remote Sensing Laboratory, National Geographic Institute in Paris, Dr Mariani joined the Institute of Systems Science's Kent Ridge Digital Laboratories where he led the face recognition project. His task there was to develop a face recognition system for mobile robots, in partnership with the prestigious Electro-Technical Laboratory in Tsukuba, Japan.
"The research challenges present at the time were very important as no face recognition systems then were able to work correctly on a robot that evolves and moves in uncontrolled environments. Face synthesis was born during this research," he reminisced. The technology he developed was showcased in Tokyo in October 2001 at the Real World Computing Partnership Symposium and met with immense success, with companies like Hitachi and Sharp displaying a keen interest. In 2002, the technology was selected as a finalist at the Singapore Defence Technology Prize Awards, and at Biometrics 2002 in London, Dr Mariani walked away with the Best Technological Innovation award. The recognition and level of interest received made Dr Mariani realise that the time was ripe for him to commercialise his invention.
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"We are a patent-driven company and actively pursue research and development...the Singapore government has some excellent schemes that help startups and we have benefitted from these."
- Dr Roberto Mariani, Chief Technology Officer and Founder, XID Technologies
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TEETHING ISSUES
The journey to establishing XID wasn't smooth sailing all the way. Commented Dr Mariani, "Aside from the difficulties linked to the technological innovation, I had to form a team, find investors, and align the direction of XID. I spent two years talking with various venture capitalists before deciding to go the route of smaller investments via angels. This allowed me to maintain an emphasis on the team."
"Becoming an entrepreneur was not so easy," he admitted. "Creating, financing, and operating our own company was something new to all of us when we began XID. The founding team brought with them varying experience and knowledge - I felt it was very important that they each brought something different to the company. The result was a highly motivated and committed founding team that complemented each other very well. Each of us left comfortable jobs to join XID and the significant personal investment we made in the company is testimony of our commitment. We also surrounded ourselves with good advisors, tapping on resources outside of XID to learn and listen."
The decision to base XID in Singapore was not a difficult one to make at all, according to Dr Mariani. "Singapore is a symbol of excellence and we feel that this reflects on XID, our products and our technologies. We are a patent-driven company and since we actively pursue research and development, we felt that Singapore was one of the best places in the region to be based in. Further, the Singapore government has some excellent schemes that help start-ups and we have benefitted from these."
XID has a staff of six, with four dedicated to R&D and operations. The role R&D plays in XID cannot be over-emphasised, said Dr Mariani. "As an intellectual property company, R&D is crucial to XID. It is our role to propose state-of-the-art technology and create new intellectual property. Our latest invention, textile/paper-based biometrics, was invented and patented by XID. To support new intellectual property, we need a larger R&D team, so we are planning to recruit an additional six R&D staff this year."
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Known as the XID SmartID system, it is the largest face recognition deployment of its kind in the world and operates 24 hours a day, outdoors in rain or shine, across 16 channels of entry
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MAKING ITS MARK ON THE WORLD
Even with its current small team size, XID has more than made its mark on the face recognition technology market. They achieved a world-first when they installed the world's largest commercial face recognition system at an immigrant workers dormitory in Singapore which verifies the identities of up to 6,000 workers daily. Known as the XID SmartID system, it is the largest face recognition deployment of its kind in the world and operates 24 hours a day, outdoors in rain or shine, across 16 channels of entry. With each worker entering and exiting approximately three to four times a day, this amounts to some 15,000 to 20,000 verifications a day, and all it takes is a mere two to three seconds.
What makes XID SmartID different from other face recognition systems on the market is its ability to "predict" how the original face in the database will appear in the future under different conditions, such as lighting and wearing of spectacles, and its creation of a multitude of additional feature vectors that serve as references in the database. This means that a live face is matched to a great number of faces stored in the database as opposed to only one, which is the case for most face recognition systems.
"We managed to achieve this in less than a year of operations, and being the world's first, we are naturally very proud of this achievement," said Dr Mariani. "In addition, we have been accepted as a nominee at the World Technology Awards 2004 in San Francisco and we were among the top six finalists at Global Entrepolis @ Singapore 2003 (Asian Innovation Awards 2003). I've also been invited to be a guest speaker at Biometrics 2004 in London. All of this I'm very proud of because it represents a clear recognition of our technology."
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"...we felt that Singapore was one of the best places in the region to be based in."
- Dr Roberto Mariani
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WHAT THE FUTURE HOLDS
With plans to open offices in Hong Kong and the USA, XID is poised to tackle greater challenges in the future. "Strategic and geographic expansion is something we have to get right and this is our key challenge," observed Dr Mariani. "Also, creating entities that specialise in vertical markets is important. These could be joint ventures or new companies - the challenge is not to lose focus and become too entrenched in one at the expense of others."
Beyond this, innovation is still XID's key strategy. Computer vision is an area it is making significant progress in, as evidenced by its latest invention, textile/paper based biometrics which makes use of computer vision techniques. And it's turning out to be yet another innovation that's attracting much interest. In fact, there is currently a project being funded by The Enterprise Challenge (TEC) for the technology's validation. TEC is an initiative from the Prime Minister's Office which sponsors the trial testing of radical innovations that can create new value to the delivery of public services.
Remarked Dr Mariani, "This technology allows us to explore new spaces, new commercial applications, and to compete directly with the smart card and bar code markets. It is very exciting indeed and aptly illustrates what XID is about - innovation for the future."
For more information on XID Technologies, please visit: www.xidtech.com
On EDB's Assistance Schemes and Programmes, please visit Startups section of www.sedb.com
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