To: WSFAlist at keithlynch.net
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2002 01:40:25 -0400
Subject: [WSFA] Walk This Way
From: ronkean at juno.com
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

http://www.informationweek.com/story/IWK20021016S0006

Oct 16, 2002 (12:00 AM)

Walk This Way

Researchers at the Georgia Tech Research Institute are working on ways to
identify people by the way they walk.

By George V. Hulme, InformationWeek

Go ahead and wear a mask to your bank heist--a lot of good it'll do you
if a
new federally funded research project pays off. Researchers at the
Georgia
Tech Research Institute are working on ways to identify people by the way
they walk.

It's referred to as gait recognition and the Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency thinks it could one day aid law enforcement. It might
also
help doctors diagnose some medical problems.

Jon Geisheimer, a research engineer at Georgia Tech, says the goal is to
identify an individual from up to 500 feet away at any time of day and in
any weather. "Our first goal was to decide if gait was even worth working
at, and we've determined that it is," Geisheimer says.

The school is studying two approaches to spotting struts: One employs
radar;
the other uses computer vision. How far off are the days when your
swagger
is stored on a database somewhere? Geisheimer is rightly cautious. "The
technology is just 2 years old," he says. Electronic facial recognition
has
been in development for a decade, and commercial products are only just
dribbling out.

.

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