Gender recognition based on ensemble learning with selective features for service robotics applications

Gender recognition for interactive functions becomes essential topic in terms of service robotics applications. Ensemble learning which combines multiple classifiers prediction is now an active area of research in Machine Learning and Pattern Recognition. We propose an ensemble learning to facilitate gender classification. The features which we use are raw data (image pixels as input), Local binary pattern (LBP), Local derivative pattern (LDP), Gabor, and Weber local descriptors (WLD). We carry out comparative experimental studies of various gender recognition schemes, including Eigenfaces, any individual classifiers, Rotation Forest, and Adaboost. Specifically, not only individual classifiers but also ensemble classifiers are based on Support Vector Machine, namely using SVM as component classifier in ensemble learning. Furthermore, we evaluate the effect of image size on classification rate. In conclusion, we find that the best classification rate is achieved with Discrete Adaboost with SVM as component classifier using the aforementioned features. Another finding is that the classification rates will increase when face image size increases.