A hidden Markov model based framework for recognition of humans from gait sequences

In this paper we propose a generic framework based on hidden Markov models (HMMs) for recognition of individuals from their gait. The HMM framework is suitable, because the gait of an individual can be visualized as his adopting postures from a set, in a sequence which has an underlying structured probabilistic nature. The postures that the individual adopts can be regarded as the states of the HMM and are typical to that individual and provide a means of discrimination. The framework assumes that, during gait, the individual transitions between N discrete postures or states but it is not dependent on the particular feature vector used to represent the gait information contained in the postures. The framework, thus, provides flexibility in the selection of the feature vector. The statistical nature of the HMM lends robustness to the model. In this paper we use the binarized background-subtracted image as the feature vector and use different distance metrics, such as those based on the L₁ and L₂ norms of the vector difference, and the normalized inner product of the vectors, to measure the similarity between feature vectors. The results we obtain are better than the baseline recognition rates reported before.