Face Detection in Intelligent Ambiences with Colored Illumination

Abstract

Human face detection is an essential step in the creation of intelligent lighting ambiences, but the constantly changing multi-color illumination makes reliable face detection more challenging. Therefore, we introduce a new face detection and localization algorithm, which retains a high performance under various indoor illumination conditions. The method is based on the creation of a robust skin mask, using general color constancy techniques, and the application of the Viola-Jones face detector on the candidate face areas. Extensive experiments, using a challenging state-of-the-art database and a new one with a wider variation in colored illumination and cluttered background, show a significantly better performance for the newly proposed algorithm than for the most widely used face detection algorithms.