A floor sensor system for gait recognition

This paper describes the development of a prototype floor sensor as a gait recognition system. This could eventually find deployment as a standalone system (e.g. a burglar alarm system) or as part of a multimodal biometric system. The new sensor consists of 1536 individual sensors arranged in a 3 m by 0.5 m rectangular strip with an individual sensor area of 3 cm². The sensor floor operates at a sample rate of 22 Hz. The sensor itself uses a simple design inspired by computer keyboards and is made from low cost, off the shelf materials. Application of the sensor floor to a small database of 15 individuals was performed. Three features were extracted : stride length, stride cadence, and time on toe to time on heel ratio. Two of these measures have been used in video based gait recognition while the third is new to this analysis. These features proved sufficient to achieve an 80% recognition rate.