Inspiration
People often see great historical figures as superhuman and inaccessible. Our app intends to counter this perception. It matches us mere plebeians to heroes of yore, nobly bridging the gap between greatness and mediocrity.
How it works
The app detects facial features with the Face Plus Plus API and matches those features to a library of images of historical figures (scraped using Python from the BBC History website). Using an algorithm of our own invention, it finds the closest match in the database.
Challenges I ran into
The function that we designed to determine how closely a certain face resembles that of a historical figure tends to favor certain faces over others -- and even though our database is comprised of around 200 images of historical figures, only a few are consistently matched.
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
Integrating the FacePlusPlus API with an Android app. Staying up until 9:45 AM.
What I learned
We learned how to make an Android App with Android Studio -- we had never used it before. We also learned some history through the BBC History webpage.
What's next for Historical Lookalikes
More coffee. And also a better GUI, a larger database of historical figures, links within the app to historical figures, and a better algorithm to determine which person a given image most closely resembles.
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