IoT and Face Recognition based Remote Access System

— There are many security systems available in the market and in thesis, which are stringent and can make things worse in the hour of need as there are many situations which demand customized authentication. These systems either require the visitors to provide details of authenticity, for instance, ID cards, passwords, etc. or require someone to explicitly be near the entrance to manually check the details. There are even some existing security systems which become cumbersome for the owners by seeking permission time and again even when the visitor is a frequent one. This paper, therefore is focused on providing a smart solution, without compromising security, by employing a system which will not only grant access to authorized visitors, but will also allow some expected visitors to walk through the doors and restrict the rest even when there is no one physically present near the entrance or anywhere near the concerned area to manually check on the visitors. This system will therefore solicit permission from the owner only when the visitor is unknown. This remote access system therefore uses face recognition, which is a biometric artificial intelligence based technology, and Internet of Things (IoT) to give access to the known visitors when it recognizes them successfully or to give access to the expected visitors by sending an e-mail to the owner with a picture of the visitor, to let the owner decide whether or not to give access to the visitor even when the owner isn’t anywhere near the entrance. For face recognition, histogram of oriented gradient has been used as it requires lower computational time and lower processing power. To allow the owner to remotely send controlling commands to the raspberry pi, Flask has been used to host a webpage designed solely for the stated purpose, along with serveo that allows remote port forwarding. The system also uses an IoT API (ThingSpeak) to upload the name of the authorized visitors and their time of arrival.