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Privacy Science

ID'ing People By How They Walk 57

Posted by timothy from the if-you-have-nothing-to-hide dept.
thedude writes "Just stumbled upon this article about a system for ID'ing people by the way they walk. Maybe a combination of facial, voice, and gait recognition will increase the accuracy of these systems? I'll be sure to waddle next time I'm at the airport."
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ID'ing People By How They Walk More

ID'ing People By How They Walk

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  • Ministry of Silly Walks (Score:5, Funny)

    by foistboinder ( 99286 ) on Tuesday October 29, 2002 @11:23AM (#4556335) Homepage Journal
    Obligatory Monty Python reference...


  • Who knew I would be able to fool everyone by using a little rascle! I AM FREE!

  • nothing new here (Score:5, Funny)

    by tps12 ( 105590 ) on Tuesday October 29, 2002 @11:30AM (#4556378) Homepage Journal
    The Bee-Gees have been doing this for years.
  • Sticking a sharpie marker in your shoe so you walk funny.

  • Us fat bastards have no choice about waddling... (Score:4, Funny)

    by $rtbl_this ( 584653 ) on Tuesday October 29, 2002 @11:33AM (#4556394)

    ...you insensitive clod!

    • It might be more than an affect for Linux people to take on a bit of a penguin waddle. Sort of like the way people resemble their pets.

      I wonder if using Windows or Apples effects your gate and if so, how.

    • It's not just overweight people. I used to hang out in the stairway after hours (co-ed dorm but you "couldn't" be on the floor of the opposite sex after hours) to talk my girlfriend while in college. I could always tell who was coming because the echo vibrations in the stairway were always distinct enough. Just about everyone I knew in college could do it. I would probably lable this study under "DUH" because any college student whose been to college proably noticed this effect. I think they are doing too much work. You just need something that vibrates when walked apon and something sensitive enough to record, and play back, the vibrations.
      • I noticed the same thing living in dorms, but there seems to be another factor in my case.

        I have horrible distance vision, and I'm always behind on seeing the eye doctor to upgrade my lens prescriptions. But frequently I'll notice something familiar about the vaguely humanoid blur approaching me from 100 yards away. More often than not it's the rhythm of their walk. I can't help but suspect I'd never have used or noticed this skill if I'd had the eye sight to identify people the traditional way.

        I also have really big feet, and as a result, when I walk, I bounce up and down with a larger "amplitude" than the average guy. Friends call it my "bounce".

  • Mmmm.

    High heels!

    I know there's cultural variations, but a sexy walk is very particular.

  • Damn my waddle. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dmorin ( 25609 ) <dmorin@gm a i l . c om> on Tuesday October 29, 2002 @11:34AM (#4556410) Homepage Journal
    Last day of high school, a friend and I dressed in gorilla suits (something that I'm sure would not be allowed these days). I worked at the supermarket across the street, so that morning we wandered over there in costume to buy some poptarts. As we were shopping a voice came over the loudspeaker, "Could we please see the gorillas at the courtesy booth?" So I sauntered up to the booth and stood there. The lady in the booth paused and said, "That's Duane!" She said she recognized my walk.

    My wife is a physical therapist. As a computer geek, I tend to recognize very bizarre techie things because they catch my eye and I feel obliged to mention them. She does the same thing with gaits. Whenever we're at the mall she will point out people and tell me the name of whatever condition they have that caused them to walk like they do.

    • This is a pretty old concept. Back in 1993 the police came to my school and had everyone (each student) walk across the floor and say their name. This was all videotaped for the purpose of helping identify any of us if we ever went missing. They say it's far more helpful than having a kidnapee's fingerprints.
    • The lady in the booth paused and said, "That's Duane!" She said she recognized my walk.

      This is why US special forces can't infiltrate Afghanistan in burkas - they don't walk like women. The British army had a similar problem in Northern Ireland - undercover soldiers tended to march rather than walk, and stood straighter than the laid-back locals, so stood out. So there are definitely applications for this technology, but unfortunately it seems like it would be more useful to terrorists than our side.
  • My footgear definately alters my footing and wayward demeanor, depending on what I'm wearing. Skate shoes, combat boots, soccer cleats... How would you suggest we tell the difference, and isolate who is wearing what and where?

    Thoughts?

  • Clean Rooms (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Atomizer ( 25193 ) on Tuesday October 29, 2002 @11:43AM (#4556481)
    This is pretty interesting. I work a lot in a clean room at a wafer manufacturer and you can't see anything but peoples eyes when they are in the clean room. You quickly learn to recognize people from their body shape, size and of course, body language. In fact if you meet somebody in the cleanroom for the first time, it's always surprising how different they can look without a mask on.
    • I used to work in a cleanroom environment as well, but i doubt my identification accuracy was in the 90-95% range... I figure more like 60%... I would grab someone's shoulder or say "hey" when they walked by and suddenly the voice from the particle mask wasn't the one I expected. Oops.. I'll be impressed if they can actually get this computer system to consistantly get it right in a real environment.
    • You recgnize people by any number of traits.

      Their hair, eyes, gate, breathing, the sound they make when they walk.

      -- Tim

  • Heinlein Referenced This (Score:3, Interesting)

    by TheWanderingHermit ( 513872 ) on Tuesday October 29, 2002 @11:59AM (#4556600)
    Remember Double Star, by RAH? He wasn't talking about computers recognizing how people walked, but the main character, before he gets involved in impersonating the President, tells one of the President's aids to put a few pebbles in his shoes so people won't recognize the way he walks. And that was when? I think Double Star was written in the 1950s.
    • I think Double Star was written in the 1950s.

      1956 [amazon.com] to be precise.
    • Walking style has been used forever by actors to define characters. Depending on which part of the body an actor leads with goes a long way in defining the mood and mannerisms of the character. James Dean/Bruce Lee lead with their hips to show that they were cool and relaxed. While macho actors who look like they are about to attack something tend to lead with their chests/chins. Shy/introverted types tend to lead with the top of their heads.

  • Access denied (Score:5, Funny)

    by Lord Sauron ( 551055 ) on Tuesday October 29, 2002 @12:08PM (#4556654)
    Access denied. Please remove your leg cast and walk normally.

  • I'm pretty sure that this (or something very much like it) was printed in New Scientist about a year ago. I can't find a link on their website tho :(

  • Age ? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Squid_Law ( 545809 )

    How would this cope with people's gaits changing as they get older ??

    Presumably if someone developed arthritis (sp?)or something else in their knees or developed a limp (or just faked it) it would mess up the recognition ?

  • Doh. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by thaddjuice ( 235568 )
    How much would it suck to be locked out by your gait recognizing door lock just because you sprained your ankle playing racketball?

  • Animation concept (Score:5, Interesting)

    by quantax ( 12175 ) on Tuesday October 29, 2002 @01:37PM (#4557514) Homepage
    In this animation book I have, the writer (the guy who animated Roger Rabbit, I forget his hame off hand), demonstrated how a walk can characterize a person. He sited an example where he saw a man walking behind a wall, with just his head showing above the wall as he walked. The man's head did not bob up and down, and the animator decided that the man had to be gay. If you've ever noticed someone walking 'elegantly', they glide more than walk. He ran up to the man to find out if his assumption was correct (never mind the non-PC nature of the observation) and found he was right. Thats a good indicator of how much you can learn about people through simple observation of their movement.

  • Gait Keeper . . . (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Dausha ( 546002 ) on Tuesday October 29, 2002 @02:02PM (#4557665) Homepage

    Except, a person's gait can change under various circumstances--not least of which being the broken leg mentioned above. There's an African tribe (I forget which) where the women are capable of carrying unGodly amounts of weight on their heads. IIRC, when carrying that load their gait optimizes. So how are they going to account for the gait changes?

    Then there's me at the airport. The wife hands me 'one-more-bag' and my gait fails to optimize. So I'm kicking, pulling, etc. the bags down the terminal.

  • Now, I don't know if this is peculiar for my age, but I'm sure it's not for say, someone five years younger than me... but my gait changes DRASTICALLY with my mood, and I'm sure this is the same for children.

    Perhaps the machines are built to recognize certain patterns that simple speed and/or step variations caused by mood can lead to. But I have distinct walking styles for various moods. About half the time, if I'm not in pain, I'll lift my heels several inches in the air constantly, even though I almost never wear high-heels (and when I do, they're only one to three inches). It seems to me that this would significantly change my gait, especially when contrasted with my usual dragging-of-the-feet or melodramatic happy skipping.

    For reference, this can't be TOO out of the ordinary for a person of my age and gender. I'm female, and almost sixteen. We're expected to randomly swing between moods and personalities, and thus, perhaps, gaits, right? ...We're not? Erm...
  • >'Gators getting close, hasn't got me yet

    I can't dance, I can't talk.
    Only thing about me is the way I walk.

    ~showing my age since 1847

  • Been doing that a while.. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Sgt York ( 591446 ) <jvolm@NospaM.earthlink.net> on Tuesday October 29, 2002 @06:40PM (#4559982)
    I have fairly poor vision, but wasn't diagnosed until I was nine; same situation with my younger sister. Neither of us could make out a face that was more than a 2-3m away, so we learned to recognize people by their walks.

    We both still do it unconciously, and even now I find it more dificult to recognize a person when they are motionless than when walking.

    There are features that stay with people, and are consistent with age, footgear, and even injury. Crutches don't fool me most of the time, and people I haven't seen in 15 years or more still have a recognizable gait.

  • Stylish Walk.. (Score:2, Funny)

    by Dareth ( 47614 )
    Please, having injured my knee as a child I seem to have picked up a "Stylish" ass-wiggling type walk, similar to pimps in movies. Needless to say this gets me heckled alot by black women saying no white man need to wiggle his ass like that... though they all agree I got a nice one...

    "Your a smart ass! But smart ass is good ass and good ass is hard to find!"

  • Can the system identify a person born without legs who walks like this [rose-hulman.edu]?

  • thedude makes an important point: too many companies are focusing their efforts on equipment that analyzes on feature of a potential criminal. Eyes, walk, voice, fingerprint, facial structure or bone structure, etc. We need to be creating equipment that combines all of these featrues into one system. That would be something law enforcement and security could actually use.
  • Kaiser Sose


    Damn, that's a fine a movie

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