日本：自動售煙機“相面”賣煙
Cigarette vending machines in Japan may soon start counting wrinkles, crow's feet and skin sags to see if the customer is old enough to smoke.
The legal age for smoking in Japan is 20 and as the country's 570,000 tobacco vending machines prepare for a July regulation requiring them to ensure buyers are not underage, a company has developed a system to identify age by studying facial features.
By having the customer look into a digital camera attached to the machine, Fujitaka Co's system will compare facial characteristics, such as wrinkles surrounding the eyes, bone structure and skin sags, to the facial data of over 100,000 people, Hajime Yamamoto, a company spokesman said.
"With face recognition, so long as you've got some change and you are an adult, you can buy cigarettes like before. The problem of minors borrowing (identification) cards to purchase cigarettes could be avoided as well," Yamamoto said.
Japan's finance ministry has already given permission to an age-identifying smart card called "taspo" and a system that can read the age from driving licenses.
Yamamoto said the system could correctly identify about 90 percent of the users, with the remaining 10 percent sent to a "grey zone" for "minors that look older, and baby-faced adults," where they would be asked to insert their driving license.
Underage smoking has been on a decline in Japan, but a health ministry survey in 2004 showed 13 percent of boys and 4 percent of girls in the third year of high school -- those aged 17 to 18 -- smoked every day.
日本的自動售煙機不久將能通過識別顧客面部的皺紋、魚尾紋和皮膚鬆弛度來判斷他們是否達到合法吸菸年齡。
日本的法定吸菸年齡爲20歲。目前日本國內的57萬臺自動售煙機正在爲將於7月份出臺的一項新規定做準備，該規定要求，自動售煙機不可向未滿合法吸菸年齡的人售煙。鑑於這種情況，日本一家公司研發出了一套可通過識別顧客面部特徵來確定購煙者年齡的系統。
研發該系統的富士高株式會社的發言人山本元說，安裝在自動售煙機上的數碼攝像機獲取顧客的面部信息後，該系統會將獲取的眼角皺紋、骨骼結構和皮膚鬆弛部位等面部特徵信息與預先存儲的10萬多人的面部特徵數據進行對比以確定購買者年齡。
山本元稱：“有了面部識別系統後，只要您有零錢，達到合法吸菸年齡，您就能像以前一樣買菸。同時這也能避免未成年人使用他人身份證買菸。”
日本財務省已批准使用一種名爲“香菸護照”的可識別年齡的智能卡，以及一套能夠根據駕照識別年齡的系統。
據山本元介紹，面部識別系統可準確辨別90%的用戶，其餘的10%屬於“灰色地帶”，這部分人由於長相顯老或有張娃娃臉而難以被確認，這時自動識別裝置會要求他們插入駕照。
近年來，日本的未成年人吸菸率一直呈下降趨勢，但日本衛生省於2004年開展的一項調查顯示，在十七八歲的高三學生中，有13%的男生和4%的女生天天吸菸。
