Apple has purported acquired Swedish face recognition firm, Polar Rose (http://www.polarrose.com), according to a report from “Mac1” (http://mac1.no/artikkel/9307/apple-kjoper-svensk-fototeknologi). The company makes a “high performance, low level face detection and recognition library for custom integration.”
Polar Rose grew out of computer vision research — the analysis of digital images and video — at the Universities of Lund and Malmö in southern Sweden. The company is currently a team of 15, including computer science graduates, mathematics Ph.Ds, and a “technology-fascinated economist.”
Polar Rose was founded by Dr. Jan Erik Solem, chief technical officer, in November 2004. He holds the core patent around Polar Rose’s technology, namely the ability to extract 3D features from a single 2D image. He’s also an associate professor at the University of Lund’s Mathematical Imaging Group, a position he holds on a part-time basis.