User identification using gait patterns on UbiFloorII

Sensors (Basel). 2011;11(3):2611-39. doi: 10.3390/s110302611. Epub 2011 Mar 1.

Abstract

This paper presents a system of identifying individuals by their gait patterns. We take into account various distinguishable features that can be extracted from a user's gait and then divide them into two classes: walking pattern and stepping pattern. The conditions we assume are that our target environments are domestic areas, the number of users is smaller than 10, and all users ambulate with bare feet considering the everyday lifestyle of the Korean home. Under these conditions, we have developed a system that identifies individuals' gait patterns using our biometric sensor, UbiFloorII. We have created UbiFloorII to collect walking samples and created software modules to extract the user's gait pattern. To identify the users based on the gait patterns extracted from walking samples over UbiFloorII, we have deployed multilayer perceptron network, a feedforward artificial neural network model. The results show that both walking pattern and stepping pattern extracted from users' gait over the UbiFloorII are distinguishable enough to identify the users and that fusing two classifiers at the matching score level improves the recognition accuracy. Therefore, our proposed system may provide unobtrusive and automatic user identification methods in ubiquitous computing environments, particularly in domestic areas.

Keywords: UbiFloorII; gait recognition; stepping pattern; user identification; walking pattern.

MeSH terms

  • Biometry / instrumentation*
  • Biometry / methods*
  • Foot / anatomy & histology
  • Gait / physiology*
  • Humans
  • Neural Networks, Computer
  • Organ Size
  • Pattern Recognition, Automated
  • Software Design
  • Walking / physiology