Google is reportedly working on facial biometric sensor for Chromebooks!

Human presence detection and facial recognition support could soon be coming to Chromebooks.

Google Chromebook (Photo from Google)

Google is still testing the hardware to run HPS 

Tech giant Google is allegedly developing "Human Presence Sensor" in collaboration with Antmicro. This feature may be used for face unlock and other Chrome OS features. 

In its blogpost published early this year, there was a small teaser of what's next for Chrome OS. In it, Google claimed of using "sensor technologies for more personalized experiences."

In the previous years, Windows has included human presence detection on its laptops, supplementing Windows Hello to make face unlock much faster. On the other hand, present Chrome OS still lacks face unlock on current Chromebooks.

Google is working with dedicated hardware to run human presence detection in its tests, specifically the CrossLink NX LIFCL-17 from Lattice Semiconductor. It is also working with Antmicro to leverage the hardware using open-source software as much as possible. 

On the manufacturer’s website, there’s even a demo video of using the hardware to count the number of people visible to a camera.

According to the source, a human presence sensor does not guarantee that facial recognition support is coming to Chromebooks. However, but the two are closely related. What the human presence sensor does is enable the PC to wake up when the user walks up to it. After that, the Windows Hello camera may recognize the user and unlock it without direct interaction from the user. 

Aside from that, this feature could allow future Chromebooks to both stay awake and not dim the screen while the user is in front of it. This has a similarity to the screen attention feature of Pixel phones.

Moreover, there's a hint that Google will equip an icon in the system tray to indicate if a person is being detected. It may even warn the user of people approaching them from behind to protect the confidentiality of the data or files being viewed.

This feature seems to be in the early stages of development so we still have to wait for Google's official announcement regarding this feature.

What do you think?

Source: 9to5Google