(Reuters) - A team of engineers that worked on self-driving cars and helped invent Google Street View wants to help people guard their homes against intruders using the same style of facial recognition that unlocks smart phones.

Lighthouse AI, their startup, on Thursday released a home security camera that uses a 3D sensor similar to that found in Apple Inc’s iPhone X. The sensor helps the camera recognize the faces of different members of a family and even pets, so it can send out alerts to a user’s phone when an unknown person enters a home but avoid false alarms caused by the family dog.

Ligthouse AI has roots with Stanford University and Alphabet Inc’s Google. The two co-founders, Alex Teichman and Hendrik Dahlkamp, met while both were working in the Stanford laboratory of Sebastian Thrun, the early leader of Google’s self-driving car efforts. Thrun is on Lighthouse’s board, and it’s backed by Andy Rubin, the co-creator of the Android mobile operating system, and his investment fund, Playground Global.

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