A newly published patent from Apple reveals the Cupertino company’s plans for a face recognition/presence detection security system for iOS devices. If this sounds familiar, its because Apple has filed a similar patent for a 3D face and object recognition system, except this time, this particular patent will be targeted specifically at iOS devices. Based on the patents description, it appears to be your typical run of the mill face detection system by comparing processing the image detected against a reference model.
However Apple’s system is looking to take it a step further by reducing the impact of how lighting plays in typical face detection system by emphasizing skin variance. It would essentially ignore face biometrics and would use feature locations to normalize an image of a test face. Considering how the Android 4.0 facial unlocking feature was tricked by a photograph, it will be interesting to see how Apple will work around this, assuming it even gets implemented at all.