In the backdrop of the devastating second wave of Covid-19 in the country, the Ministry of Defence is pushing facial recognition-based attendance system in its various departments and public sector undertakings. As many as three tenders reviewed by the MediaNama, all dated from earlier this week show that the Ministry is mooting introducing the technology to the Garden Reach Ship Builders and Engineers Limited (GRSE), a shipyard in Kolkata which builds and repairs commercial and naval vessels; to Metal and Steel Factory (under Indian Ordnance Factories) in the North 24 Parganas district of West Bengal and for the Indian Army in Assam. 1. The tender floated by the Indian Ordnance Factories for Metal and Steel Factory listed that they need "Face Recognition Biometric Attendance System For Covid" system installed for a price of Rs 4 lakh. They have listed out the various specifications that they require an facial recognition system (FRS) which include detecting masks and so on. Following are a few of their requirements - Motion-based liveness detection method Partial face occlusion recognition Mask detection feature Face anti-spoofing Face recognition in a dark environment For the facial recognition system to work, the Indian Ordnance Factories is looking for a Linux-based operating system which can identify faces within 0.2 second to 1 second. The system should be able to identify beards and various hairstyles of workers and the entire system should be integrated to an administrator's smartphone. It has asked bidders to supply, install, test and train operators apart from…
