Developing and Refining a Multifunctional Facial Recognition System for Older Adults with Cognitive Impairments: A Journey Towards Enhanced Quality of Life

TL;DR

This paper presents a new multifunctional facial recognition system tailored for older adults with cognitive impairments, aiming to improve their quality of life through enhanced assistive technology.

Contribution

It introduces a novel integrated facial recognition system combining identification, image capture, and voice recording functionalities for elderly users with cognitive challenges.

Findings

System effectively recognizes and retrieves faces.

Enhanced usability for older adults demonstrated.

Open-source code available for further development.

Abstract

In an era where the global population is aging significantly, cognitive impairments among the elderly have become a major health concern. The need for effective assistive technologies is clear, and facial recognition systems are emerging as promising tools to address this issue. This document discusses the development and evaluation of a new Multifunctional Facial Recognition System (MFRS), designed specifically to assist older adults with cognitive impairments. The MFRS leverages face_recognition [1], a powerful open-source library capable of extracting, identifying, and manipulating facial features. Our system integrates the face recognition and retrieval capabilities of face_recognition, along with additional functionalities to capture images and record voice memos. This combination of features notably enhances the system's usability and versatility, making it a more user-friendly and universally applicable tool for end-users. The source code for this project can be accessed at https://github.com/Li-8023/Multi-function-face-recognition.git.