Automatic gait recognition

Abstract

Gait is an emergent biometric aimed essentially to recognise people by the way they walk. Its advantages are that it is non-invasive and that it is less likely to be obscured since it appears to be difficult to camouflage, especially in cases of serious crime. Gait has allied subjects which lend support to the view that gait has clear potential as a biometric. Essentially, we use computer vision to find people and to derive a gait signature from a sequence of images. The majority of current approaches derive motion characteristics, which are then used for recognition. Early results by these studies confirm that there is a rich potential in gait for recognition. Only continued development in technique and in analysis will confirm whether its performance can match that of other biometrics.