Facial recognition(识别) is becoming more and more common in China. It has been used at ATM machines and KFC restaurants. Now the technology has arrived in university classrooms to track students’ attendance.
Shen Hao, a professor in Communication University of China, is using facial recognition in his six courses to keep track of the attendance of more than 300 students and make sure no one is pretending to be anyone else.
Before every class, Shen starts the new attendance system installed on his computer. Students stand in front of the screen one by one to have their photos taken and matched with those in the school’s database. “The traditional way of tracking attendance is through a roll call. The new system saves time and reduces the workload of teachers,” said Shen.
Students have joked that facial recognition is strict as it doesn’t allow anybody to skip(缺席) classes. “But they support the technology to enter colleges,” said Cui Yuqin, a student of the university.