Chinese artificial intelligence company Megvii Technology, which is on a U.S. blacklist, has recently added a number of new patents, one of which is for dog face recognition.
The patent is titled "a method, apparatus, system, and storage medium for detecting the characteristic points of a dog's nose print." It was filed in December 2018 with a publication date in July 2020.
The patent is based on dog nose images and dog nose print models that have been trained to obtain a coordinate deviation of a dog nose print feature point in the dog nose image from a corresponding respective dog nose print reference feature point.
It obtains coordinates of each dog-nose feature point in the dog-nose image based on the coordinates of each dog-nose pattern reference feature point and said coordinate deviation.
The method can effectively improve the accuracy and real-time performance of the detection of dog nose print feature points.
Megvii was established in October 2011, and its business scope includes technology development, technology consulting, technology service, technology transfer, computer system service, and application software service.
In July 2019, it was reported that Megvii expanded its facial recognition technology to other areas, such as the ability to identify pet dogs with the help of trained artificial intelligence technology.
Similar to the face unlock feature on a phone, if you want to accurately identify the dog's corresponding information, you need to first scan and record the information of the nose.
The reason for recording this information is that a dog's nose print is similar to a human fingerprint, a unique biological characteristic. Even if a dog is born from a single litter, the lines are very different.
On July 20, Alipay insurance platform announced the opening of the pet nose print recognition technology, the first time this technology is applied to pet insurance.
At present, the "pet medical insurance" allows owners to insure their cats and dogs.
When applying for insurance, the Alipay insurance platform will create an exclusive electronic file for the pet based on the nasal print information.