23. The apparatus according to claim 2 , wherein the apparatus further comprises means for arranging the plurality of learning machines in parallel.
2. An apparatus for determining age categories of people, comprising: a) means for annotating a facial image database according to the demographics classes of the individual face, b) means for training a plurality of learning machines so that each learning machine outputs auxiliary demographics class information and age information of any given facial image, c) means for detecting and tracking a facial image from the input image frame, d) means for processing said facial image to extract image features, and e) means for processing said image features obtained from said facial image using classification techniques for determining age or age categories, whereby the age classes can be any partition based on age in multiple groups, wherein the apparatus further comprises means for determining the target outputs of the plurality of learning machines so that each learning machine maps a first input data, whose facial images belong to a first auxiliary demographics class, to first vector-valued points on a manifold in the space of facial images, whereas each learning machine maps a second input data, whose facial images do not belong to a first auxiliary demographics class, to second vector-valued points away from the manifold.