Biometric Gait Recognition Advances

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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/07/130730091259.htm

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[h=1]Recognizing People by the Way They Walk[/h] July 30, 2013 — Recognizing people by the way they walk can have numerous applications in the fields of security, leisure or medicine. Ramon Mollineda, lecturer at the Department of Computing Languages ​​and Systems at the Universitat Jaume I, is working with his team in the development of this new biometric technique that takes into account the way a person walks and his/her silhouette. The technique offers significant advantages as recognition can be done remotely and does not require the cooperation of the subject.

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Detecting suspicious behaviour (video surveillance), access control to buildings or to restricted areas and demographic analysis of a population in terms of gender and age range are just some of the possible applications of this technology.


The role of biometrics as an artificial intelligence field is the identification of an individual based on certain physical and non-transferable aspects of his/her body, such as fingerprint or facial recognition. These are just two of the most widely used and developed biometric sources because, as the researcher states, "they are very reliable and difficult to fake, although both require that the user is close to the sensor and collaborates in the recognition process, and we can not always count on that." Hence the importance of advancing in complementary techniques.


We all have a very personal way of walking. "Although it is easy to manipulate and consciously change, each person walks in a different way," says Mollineda. "There are experiments in which a person has to recognize familiar people just watching his/her silhouette in motion and the success rate is very high," he adds. It has to be kept in mind that there are several factors that influence so that each person has a unique way of walking. From a video of the subject walking, the developed system distinguishes the background silhouette and it becomes a sequence of silhouettes, placed one upon the other, resulting in a summary image. This final representation stores all physical appearance and movement of the person walking, thus getting a unique mark for each of them.


Mollineda warns that, for now, due to the margin of error that gait recognition has in not controlled real scenarios, this technique would be much more effective if combined with facial recognition. "They are complementary methods: the way you walk can be detected from a distance and does not require a high-resolution image (it can be done even against a backlight and with poor lighting), while face recognition is performed close-up and with a high-resolution image. In this way, surveys could be carried out in a wider range of conditions or, if both methods are applicable, results could be more reliable thanks to contrasting hypotheses about the identity of an individual generated by two biometric systems."

Add an ARGUS 1.8 Gigapixel satellite...

 

[GuerrillaXXI]

This sort of research should be viewed along the same lines as research into new nerve gases, bioweapons, or torture devices. It's purely anti-humanity, and those who engage in it are either incredibly naive about the trustworthiness of government, or extremely evil.

Now the good news...

Mollineda warns that, for now, due to the margin of error that gait recognition has in not controlled real scenarios, this technique would be much more effective if combined with facial recognition.

I've read more than a few technical papers on this topic (out of concern), and it appears that gait recognition is a very unreliable biometric. It's been the subject of research for well over a decade, and studies have shown that the gait a computer "sees" is heavily dependent on the subject's silhouette, which in turn is changed by clothing (baggy clothes in particular will obscure gait). Gait is also altered by footwear, bags/backpacks, walking surface, walking speed, etc., and can change with age and body weight. Sure, gait might be able to pick one person out of a sample of 20 on a given day with decent accuracy, but in a sample of thousands or millions it will be useless. It's highly unlikely that gait will ever rival something like fingerprints.

As for face recognition, the answer to that is to cover one's entire head and face. Of course you can't do that when you go into a bank, but if you have to go somewhere anonymously at night...

Add an ARGUS 1.8 Gigapixel satellite...

Gait recognition from above is even less reliable than from a camera filming from the side of a person (the optimum arrangement). With its current resolution, ARGUS isn't likely to be capable of identifying people directly, especially at night.

Speaking of ARGUS, Gorgon Stare, etc., I wonder if they've ever been able to get any use out of those? I read that three ARGUS systems were supposed to be sent to Afghanistan, but that had to be nixed because of problems with the A160 helicopter drone that was supposed to carry it. The A160 was scrapped, and I haven't heard much about these systems since then other than complaints that the amount of data they were collecting was using up too much bandwidth and was too voluminous to sort through in a timely manner.

Thus, at this point ARGUS seems like an airborne moving target indicator (MTI) radar of the sort that has existed for decades, only without the ability to see as well through bad weather. The availability of lots of overhead cover (forests and especially urban areas) also degrades overhead surveillance. (I don't know if they've succeeded in developing the infrared version of ARGUS for nighttime use yet. If not, then hopefully they never will.)

 

[thoughtomator]

I knew I'd regret taking this job.