In this report, we present a PDA-based system for extending human memory or/and information retrieval using a human face as the lookup index. The system can help a user to remember names of people whom he/she has met before, and find useful information, such as names and research interests, about people whom he/she is interested in talking to. The system uses a captured face image as the lookup index to retrieve information from some available resource such as departmental directory, web sites, personal homepages, etc. We describe the development of a PDA-based face recognition system, and introduce algorithms for image preprocessing to enhance the quality of the image by sharpening focus, and normalizing both lighting condition and head rotation. We use a unified LDA/PCA algorithm for face recognition. We address design issues of the interface to assist in visualization and comprehension of retrieved information. We present user study and experiment results to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed system.

26 pages

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