FRVT 2012 Applicaton 

Applicaton to Partcipate in the FRVT 2012 

(Face Recogniton Vendor Test 2012) 

1. Who Should Partcipate 

1.1. Face recogniton technology researchers and developers from industry, research insttutons, and 

academia are eligible to partcipate in the FRVT 2012. 

1.2. Anonymous partcipaton is not permited. 

2. How to Partcipate 

2.1. To request partcipaton in FRVT 2012, potental partcipants must read this applicaton (Applicaton to 

Partcipate in FRVT 2012), sign the “Request to Partcipate” secton below, atach business cards from each of 

the signing partes, and send it to the address below (Paragraph 5.8). Signatures of both the Responsible Party 

and the Point of Contact are required. 

2.1.1. The Responsible Party is an individual with the authority to commit the organizaton to 

the terms in this document. 

2.1.2. The Point of Contact (POC) is an individual with detailed knowledge of the technology 

applying for partcipaton. 

2.1.3. In some cases, the Responsible Party and the POC may be the same person. 

2.2. Upon receipt of the signed applicaton by the Natonal Insttute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the 

organizaton will be classifed as a “Tentatve FRVT 2012 Partcipant.” NIST must receive this signed applicaton 

with the algorithm prototypes. Algorithm prototypes shall be submited as Sofware Development Kit(s) (SDK). 

They may be submited during the submission period from July 25, 2012 to December 14, 2012. The 

applicaton is required to be submited with the frst SDK submission; subsequent submissions do not require 

the applicaton. 

2.3. It is NIST’s desire to select all Tentatve Partcipants as Partcipants. However, if demand for partcipaton 

exceeds NIST’s ability to properly evaluate the technology, NIST will select Partcipants on a frst come - frst 

served basis. 

2.4. The FRVT 2012 will evaluate three tasks. Each will use input biometric samples. The samples may be single 

frames, or sequences of frames from video. 

2.4.1 1-1 Verifcaton. The basic biometric verifcaton task is comparing two biometric 

samples and reportng a similarity value. 

2.4.2 1-Many Large Scale Identfcaton. This task will involve recogniton across a very large 

gallery with the potental for multple images of the subject. 

2.4.3 Characteristc Estmaton. This task will estmate: whether the face in the biometric 

sample is frontal or not; whether the subject of the sample is a male or female; the age of the 

subject; the facial expression neutrality of the subject. 

2.5. More informaton regarding the instructons, input and output formats, and technical specifcatons for 

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FRVT 2012 Applicaton 

each of the above tasks is included in FRVT 2012: Concept, Evaluaton Plan, and API. 

2.6. Each organizaton approved to partcipate and accepted as a “Tentatve Partcipant” will be asked to signup for the tasks they intend to submit SDKs for. More informaton on the task sign-up process will be given 

afer receipt of this applicaton. 

2.7. Each partcipant must deliver a separate SDK for each task in which it chooses to partcipate. SDKs 

submited must be compliant with the FRVT 2012 Protocol and must be delivered to NIST (at the address in 

paragraph 5.8 below) during the submission period given in paragraph 2.2 according to the technical 

specifcatons given in FRVT 2012: Concept, Evaluaton Plan, and API. These require use of strong encrypton. 

3. Points of Contact 

3.1. The FRVT 2012 Liaison is the NIST point of contact. 

3.2. All questons and correspondence should be directed to the FRVT 2012 Liaison at frvt2012@nist.gov. 

Questons and correspondence will be received by the FRVT 2012 Liaison and other FRVT 2012 personnel. 

3.3. The answers to questons and correspondence will be provided as updates to the FRVT 2012: Concept, 

Evaluaton Plan, and API document. 

3.4. Interested partes and Partcipants should not contact any individual member of the FRVT 2012 staf. 

4. Release of FRVT 2012 Results 

4.1. Interim results will be provided to partcipants as a series of test report cards as described in clause 1.6 of 

the FRVT 2012: Concept, Evaluaton Plan, and API. These results will not identfy partcipants; instead results 

will be associated with random identfers. The report cards may be provided to Government personnel. 

4.2. NIST will release FRVT 2012 results as a set of Final Reports, which will identfy all partcipants along with 

their results. The FRVT 2012 Final Reports will contain, at a minimum, descriptve informaton concerning FRVT 

2012, descriptons of each experiment, and performance results. 

4.3. Partcipants will be notfed of the public release of the FRVT 2012 Final Reports. 

4.4. Afer the release of the FRVT 2012 Final Reports, Partcipants may decide to use the results for their own 

purposes. Such results shall be accompanied by the following statement: “Results shown from the Face 

Recogniton Vendor Test 2012 do not consttute endorsement of any partcular product by the U.S. 

Government.” Such results shall also be accompanied by the Internet address (URL) of the FRVT 2012 Final 

Reports on the FRVT 2012 website. Partcipants shall not use the name of NIST or the Department of 

Commerce on any advertsement, product or service, which is directly or indirectly related to this agreement. 

Partcipants shall not in any way imply that this agreement is an endorsement of any Partcipant product or 

service. 

5. Additonal Informaton 

5.1. This is a Sofware Development Kit (SDK) test. It will be carried out at a NIST facility. 

5.2. Performance results will be publicly atributed to partcipants and their SDKs in the FRVT 2012 reports. 

5.3. Sofware that is not compliant with the FRVT 2012 Protocol specifcatons cannot be tested.

 5.4. In order to be tested, SDKs must install easily (i.e., one installaton step with no partcipant interacton 

required), and shall be executable on any number of machines without requiring any machine-specifc license 

control procedures or actvaton. 

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FRVT 2012 Applicaton 

5.5. Partcipant agrees to hold harmless the FRVT 2012 Sponsors, staf contractors and all agencies of the U.S. 

Government for any harm or damage incurred in the course of partcipatng in the FRVT 2012. 

5.6. The Government is not bound or obligated to follow any recommendatons that may be submited by the 

Partcipant. NIST is prohibited from, in any way, giving any special consideraton to FRVT 2012 Partcipants or 

any other party on future procurements, contracts or collaboratons. 

5.7. By signing this applicaton, Partcipants acknowledge that they understand and agree to the provisions of 

this form and the technical specifcatons in the FRVT 2012: Concept, Evaluaton Plan, and API version. 

5.8. Original signed copies of the FRVT 2012 applicaton are required. Original, signed copies of this applicaton, 

with business cards from both signing partes atached, must be mailed to the address below. These must be 

signed paper hardcopies. Scanned documents submited via email are not acceptable. Please send an email 

message to frvt2012@nist.gov statng that you have sent your applicaton. Upon receipt of your applicaton, we 

will send you a confrmaton email message. 

Mailing Address: 

FRVT 2012 Liaison 

Natonal Insttute of Standards and Technology 

Informaton Access Division (894) 

100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8940 

Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8940 

Per the instructons for transmission of encrypted content to NIST1 partcipants should complete the 

box below. 

Partcipant's public-key 

fngerprint (enter here) 

NIST's public-key fngerprint BE3B 5479 5520 A122 5DC3 C070 1141 80CF ACCA AADF 

1htp://www.nist.gov/itl/iad/ig/encrypt.cfm 

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FRVT 2012 Applicaton 

Request to Partcipate 

With my signature, I hereby request consideraton as a Partcipant in the FRVT 2012, and I am authorizing 

my company or organizaton to partcipate according to the rules and limitatons listed in this document. 

With my signature, I also state that I have the authority to accept the terms stated in this document. 

 ______________________________________________________ ______________ 

SIGNATURE, TITLE AND ORGANIZATION OF RESPONSIBLE PARTY DATE

 ______________________________________________________ ______________ 

SIGNATURE, TITLE AND ORGANIZATION OF POINT OF CONTACT DATE 

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