The Japanese want to ensure that their young citizens cannot purchase cigarettes from cigarette vending machines have come up with an RFID based vending machine with facial recognition software.
More than 570,000 cigarette vending machines were fitted with RFID readers so that their age verification cards could be checked before cigarettes were dispensed to them. People without age verification cards could make purchases using the face recognition system which recognized the facial features of the person and in case it believed that the person is over the legal age of twenty then only the cigarettes were dispensed to them but one of the reporters managed to fool the system using fake pictures of a fifty year old man and female celebrity in her thirties and get cigarettes for himself.
The face-recognition machines rely on cameras that scan the purchaser’s face for wrinkles, sagging skin and other signs of age. Facial characteristics are compared with a database of more than 100,000 people, and if the purchaser is thought to be well over 20 years old (the legal age), the sale is approved. If the purchaser looks too young, they are asked to prove their age by inserting a driver’s license.
The company responsible for these vending machines is now working on a more advanced system that will make sure each face belongs to a real human, but they are unable to say when these new machines will be put into place.
