People often feel that they can identify a familiar person from afar simply by
recognizing the way the person walks. This common experience, combined with
recent interest biometrics, has lead to the development of gait recognition as a
from of biometric identification.
As a biometric, gait has several attractive properties. Acquisition of images
portraying an individual’s gait can be done easily in public areas, with simple
instrumentation, and does not require the cooperation or even awareness of the
individual under observation. In fact, it seems that it is the possibility that a
subject may not be aware of the surveillance and identification that raises public
concerns about gait biometrics [1].
There are also several confounding properties of gait as a biometric. Unlike
finger prints, we do not know the extent to which an individual’s gait is unique.
Furthermore, there are several factors, other than the individual, that cause
variations in gait, including footwear, terrain, fatigue, and injury.
This paper gives an overview of the factors that affect both human and machine
recognition of gaits, data used in gait and motion analysis, evaluation
methods, existing gait and quasi gait recognition systems, and uses of gait analysis
beyond biometric identification.