Automated Attendance System Using Computer Vision
2022 Second International Conference on Computer Science, Engineering and Applications (ICCSEA) | 978-1-6654-5834-4/22/$31.00 ©2022 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/ICCSEA54677.2022.9936266
Harshit Kesharwani Tamoshree Mallick
Scholar, CSE Department, Scholar, CSE Department,
School of Engineering and School of Engineering and
Technology Technology
Sharda University, Greater Noida Sharda University, Greater Noida
harshitkesharwani18@gmail.com tamoshree.mallick.24@gmail.com
Abstract— Automated attendance system using computer vision is
a model based on real-time facial recognition which works on deep
learning algorithms. This automated system efficiently manages
time with excellent accuracy. To reduce human effort, our model
will precisely recognise the image and according to the label
assigned to that particular image, the attendance will be marked
accordingly. The concerned faculty can also retrieve the database
of present students on a particular day. This reduces the time
required for managing the manual attendance and also eliminates
the chances of proxy attendance. Moreover, our model uses
OpenCV and Dlib as the major libraries and Principal component
analysis (PCA) algorithm. Traditional facial recognition systems
only recognise one face at a time, but this paper deals with the
automated attendance system which could detect multiple faces at
a time and mark their presence simultaneously. In our paper, we
have done multiple experiments with our model and the results are
excellent with accuracy ranging from 75 to 100 %.
Keywords—PCA, Dlib, Deep learning, computer vision
I. INTRODUCTION
Biometric recognition is one of the most promising
authentication techniques. It has its application in multiple
domains. The fingerprint authentication technique is one of the
most accurate biometric authentication techniques but it takes
time to process and could not process the authentication of
multiple persons at a time using a single device. This could be
tackled using another biometric authentication technique i.e.,
Facial recognition The facial recognition system is an evolving
technology replacing the other biometrics and the manual
attendance system effectively as it enables faster authentication
using a single device.
This automated system is a universal biometric solution as
this does not require user intervention and each individual has a
unique face which makes everyone unique from each other. The
model can be used in mostly 3 basic domains: attendance and
employee management, visitors management, access control and
authorization systems. This model will mainly be focusing on
the automated attendance of the students to replace the hectic
schedules of the manual attendance system. The system records
the presence of the enrolled students and makes a log file of all
the enrolled students to a universal system time respectively.
A. Face detection:
In face detection, the facial features are separated from the
background image.
978-1-6654-5834-4/22/$31.00 ©2022 IEEE
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Ayushi Gupta Gaurav Raj
Scholar, CSE Department Associate Professor,
ABES Institute of Technology, CSE Department,
Ghaziabad, India School of Engineering and
ayushi2020cs140@abesit.edu.in Technology
Sharda University, Greater Noida
gaurav.raj@sharda.ac.in
A Face tracking component is used for the separation and
tracking in a video stream
B. Face Alignment:
Face alignment allows us to find the best localization and
normalization.
In which a bare estimation of the facial features happens in
detection, and only the face outline happens such as outlines of
the face shape, eyes nose ears, and mouth. After which the face
is normalized with respect to geometric transforms.
C. Feature Extraction:
After completion of face detection and face alignment steps,
feature extraction is the most important step and it gives
effective information that is useful to compare faces and find
their differences.
D. Face Matching:
As the features are extracted, the extracted features are then
used to compare with the already stored database of the facial
features and are compared for finding out the matching faces,
which is done using the match score.
The major contributions this paper presents in this field are:
I. It can recognize multiple faces at a time/
II. It could recognize multiple faces and mark their
attendance at a time without any delay.
III. The accuracy of the tested result is far better than the
previously proposed system.
IV. The model training data required for using the model is
just a single labelled image per person.
II. LITERATURE WORK
By doing the literature survey on facial recognition, we found it
is a two-step process of face detection and its recognition. The
first and the most important part is encoding the image and
classifying it into the facial and non-facial regions.
There are many methods used for facial reorganization i.e.,
holistic approach, feature-based approach and appearance-
based approach. The entire face is considered as input in a
holistic approach while in the case of a feature-based approach
the characteristics such as the nose, and eyes are divided and are
taken as input.
There are many facial recognition algorithms such as
Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), Eigenfaces, Fisher
faces, Kernel Methods: PCA and SVM Three-Dimensional
Recognition, etc. There are many projects and research done in
this field. In any organization, especially institutions,
attendance is one of the most crucial papers. Some of the
previous proposed works are discussed below:
Jadhav, Akshara et al. [1] proposed the work which depicts the
use of the classification learning algorithm SVM (Support
Vector Machine) for the classification and distinction of
features by the usage of PCA technique for the detection of the
facial lines and the students’ face. After that, Backpropagation
Neural Network (BPNN) is utilized for the recognition of the
face. Yudhisthir Ware, Hemantkumar Rathod, Suresh Raulo,
Vishal Pakhare, Snehal Sane and Imdad A. Rizvi et al. [2] made
an attendance management system that calculates each student's
attendance by continuously clicking photos for a period of time
and selecting the best-localised image for processing. The
system allows the instructor to automatically verify student
attendance without any additional expense or effort, although
the suggested system requires only a few basic items, such as a
camera, laptop or personal computer, and a local network. This
procedure is safe, dependable, and simple to apply. The entire
system is written in MATLAB. Naman Gupta, Vikas Deep,
Purushottam Sharma and Vinod Kumar Shukla, et al. [3] had
created an automated attendance system to address the flaws in
the traditional manual frameworks used in schools and colleges.
The use of picture handling mechanisms in homeroom is
demonstrated in this participation framework. This framework
can not only aid in the participation framework, but it can also
boost an organization's generosity and significantly reduce time
and paper waste. Jules-Raymond Tapamo, Louis Mothwa and
Temitope Mapayi et al. [4] present a smart model for a student
attendance tracking system based on face recognition. The
presence of students for the whole lecture duration is
determined via real-time facial recognition combined with
frequent updates of attendance information. This can motivate
pupils to arrive on time and work well in class. R. Kishor
Kumar, Reshma Upadhyaya, C. Ganesh Prasad, & Rahul A.
Aithal et al. [5] developed an automatic attendance system
using face detection methods such as Face Landmark
Estimation and Histogram of Oriented Gradients (HOG)
followed by face identification using a deep convolutional
neural network. A database comprising the photographs of the
students is established in the system. The picture of all the
students in the classroom is captured by a camera mounted in
the classroom. To recognise faces and automatically mark
attendance on an excel sheet, this image is analysed using
machine learning techniques. [6] Human biometrics can be used
to track attendance in a variety of ways, including face
recognition. Basheer and Raghu demonstrated a fingerprint-
based attendance system in which a fingerprint mechanism is
used to uniquely identify pupils. Vyas [7] proposed the
principal component analysis (PCA) technique, in which facial
images are juxtaposed into a space that conveys differentiation
between realized faces. Face photos that are the most effective.
Face space is structured by eigenface strategies, i.e.,
eigenvectors of face sets, which are probable to be linked to
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eigenvectors. These systems are accurate up to a certain extent
but they are time-consuming and the facial recognition
proposed could detect one face at a time.
The proposed system deals with these disadvantages with
some major advantages.
1. It could detect multiple faces at a time and mark the
attendance simultaneously.
2. It deals with multiple algorithms and included the Facial
recognition library python which is 99.38% accurate.[4]
III. PROPOSED WORK
The proposed model involves real-time face recognition and
simultaneous entry into the database. The system is completely
developed using python as the programing language in which
we are importing Face recognition, NumPy, OS, Cv2 and
DateTime library.
A. Technologies invloves
The face Recognition library itself is a vast library based
on multiple facial recognition algorithms and
technologies. Few are discussed below.
i. Dlib: It is an open-source C++ library that deals with
major machine learning algorithms methods and
classes for machine learning. It includes algorithms
like regression, clustering, data transformation, and
structured prediction. K-Means clustering, Bayesian
Networks [10]. It is considered the best library for
image processing involving the implementation of
algorithms like SURF, HOG, and FHOG feature
extraction algorithms.
ii. PCA: Principal Component Analysis is an
unsupervised learning approach of machine learning to
reduce dimensionality.
iii. It is a statistical method of turning the observation of
correlated features into a set of linear non-correlated
data.
iv. Deep learning: Deep learning is the most advanced
Artificial intelligence technique which includes neural
networks. Learning can be supervised, semi-
supervised or unsupervised.
NumPy is a python library for multidimensional arrays and
derived objects Arrays, masked arrays, matrices, and
routines that accelerate array operations.

Figure 1. The complete flow chart of the proposed model.
Cv2 is the import statement for OpenCV-python. It is an
opensource library with multi language like python, C++,
Java etc. This library provide support for computer vison,
machine learning, image processing. [11]
OS module in python provides the portable way for using
the operating system dependent functionality. It also
provides the convenient way of utilizing the system
resources.[12]
Datetime module support current date time extraction
along with arithmetic operation support on date and time.
B. Model Implementation
To build our face recognition-based attendance
system, steps needed are follows:
1) Face detection in training image
2) Facial and no facial region classification
3) Facial region encoding train a face recognition
model on the encoding
4) Finally recognize faces in both image or video
streams with OpenCV
5) Encoding comparison of trained Image and live
stream videos.
i. Implementation as per user View
With the initialization of the program, mounted camera
will start capturing the live video then the video
received will be classified into facial region and non-
facial region [13]. Non facial region will be discarded
and the facial region will be compared with the present
encoded trained data images and will display the
unique ID on the screen forming a square on the
identified faces adding their Unique ID into the
database.
ii. Implementation as per system view
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With the initialization of the program, the program will
search for the training images present in the training
image repository, will encode them and store them in
a list, then the list of the names of the training images
get stored in a list. Then the OS module will initiate the
camera and live video encoding will be done by
Biergarten's facial and non-facial regions [14].
The live video and trained data are compared and if the
faces from the training data are found in the real-time
video, then the unique ID with the time is mentioned
in the CSV file [15].
In this, cv2 is used to load an image from the
specified file.
Syntax:
cv2.imread(path, flag)
Parameters:
* Path: It is a string which represents the path of the
image which is to be read.
* Flag: It is used to specify how the image should be
read.
The default value is cv2.IMREAD_COLOUR
iii. Backend coding and technical aspects
When we consider the coding part, first we are importing
the libraries like cv2, NumPy, face recognition,
Operating system, date and time. Now we assign images
as the student’s system id and this data is stored in the
path (Folder name) [16]. The webcam takes the image of
the students, even multiple people's face is recognized at
the same time [17]. The images taken by the webcam are
stored temporarily to compare and give attendance to the
students. The temporarily stored data is now compared
with the data stored in the path (folder name) [18]. Then
the attendance is marked accordingly and the data is
saved along with their system ID and time date when the
attendance was marked (Unique Id provided to every
person)
IV. EXPERIMENTAL DATA SET AND RESULT
For experimental purposes, images of 5 students from the class
are taken as training data, which contains two male and three
female persons, of which two are twin sisters. Each image is
labelled with its unique system IDs.
Figure 2. The Primary Key for Test Dataset
 The steps which are taken for experimental purposes are
mentioned below:
1. Face Detection:
Live video capture from camera
Begin:
//Pre-process the captured videos and extract face images
//Encoded the captured face image
and compared with existing values of encoded faces in
the database.
//If the encoded value does not match with the database,
temporarily stored face data is bypassed and starts searching
for another face in the live video.
//If encoded image value matches with the database step
2 will begin.
Figure 4. Recognition of known dataset
END
Below the result is discussed for 5 test training images:
Table 1: Accuracy Testing of Student as Per System ID

System ID No. of Time Tested Accuracy

2020508807 10 100%

2020442638* 15 86.66%

2020442645* 7 93%

2020538328 12 100%

2020526742 5 100%

Unknown** 12 75%

*Twins System IDs

**When an unknown person whose data is not
mentioned in the data set is kept in front of the camera,
Figure 3. Depicting unknown datasets then 8 out of 12 times, the person is undetected while
in the other 4 cases the person is detected by some other
system IDs.
2. Face Recognition:
Using the face recognition library python, the following
steps would be followed for face recognition:
Accuracy
Begin:
100
// Matching the encoded information from the face image
Accuracy in %

to the encoding stored in the list, taking the index of the 80

matched encoded data. 60
40
//Taking the value stored at the particular index in the
20
Unique ID list.
0
// update the CSV file with the System ID and
system time and date at the time of completion of
attendance.
End;
System ID

Figure 5. Graphical Representation of Data Vs Accuracy

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