Effecting an Improvement to the Fitness Function. How to Evolve a More Identifiable Face

• Published in: 2008 Bio-inspired, Learning and Intelligent Systems for Security pp. 3 - 10
• Main Authors: Frowd, C., Park, J., McIntyre, A., Bruce, V., Pitchford, M., Fields, S., Kenirons, M., Hancock, P.J.B.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01-08-2008
• Subjects: Construction industry; crime; evolve; Face; Face recognition; facial composite; Facial features; Psychology; Shape; Videos; witness
• ISBN: 9780769532653; 0769532659
• DOI: 10.1109/BLISS.2008.28

Constructing the face of a criminal from the selection of individual facial parts is a hard task. We have been working on a new system called EvoFIT that involves the selection and breeding of complete faces. The approach is theoretically better founded and produces more identifiable composites than those from a traditional 'feature' system. In the current paper, we explored three new methods of presenting faces to a person using EvoFIT. A better quality face was evolved if (1) the external parts of the face were subjected to a Gaussian blur, allowing a user to focus on the important inner region of the face, (2) if the faces were simplified to make them sketch-like in appearance, and (3) if users took longer in deciding which faces to select for breeding. Taken together, these approaches would appear to make a marked improvement in the ability to evolve an identifiable likeness of a target.