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ID'ing People By How They Walk
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."
Obligatory Monty Python reference...
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Who knew I would be able to fool everyone by using a little rascle! I AM FREE!
Neck_of_the_Woods
#/usr/local/surf/glassy/overhead
The Bee-Gees have been doing this for years.
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Sticking a sharpie marker in your shoe so you walk funny.
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...you insensitive clod!
"Are you being weird, or sarcastic?" said Emma. I said I didn't know because I get the two feelings mixed up.
Mmmm.
High heels!
I know there's cultural variations, but a sexy walk is very particular.
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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.
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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?
Informatus Technologicus
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.
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.
Access denied. Please remove your leg cast and walk normally.
I wonder if using Windows or Apples effects your gate and if so, how.
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 ?
If not by the DCMA, then for sure by the NFL.
How much would it suck to be locked out by your gait recognizing door lock just because you sprained your ankle playing racketball?
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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.
"What can a thoughtful man hope for mankind on Earth, given the experience of the past million years? Nothing." -Bokonon
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.
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
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.
...We're not? Erm...
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?
>'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
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.
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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.
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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...
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Damn, that's a fine a movie