Gait components and their application to gender recognition

Abstract

Human gait is a promising biometrics resource. In this paper, the information about gait is obtained from the motions of the different parts of the silhouette. The human silhouette is segmented into seven components, namely head, arm, trunk, thigh, front-leg, back-leg, and feet. The leg silhouettes for the front-leg and the back-leg are considered separately because, during walking, the left leg and the right leg are in front or at the back by turns. Each of the seven components and a number of combinations of the components are then studied with regard to two useful applications: human identification (ID) recognition and gender recognition. More than 500 different experiments on human ID and gender recognition are carried out under a wide range of circumstances. The effectiveness of the seven human gait components for ID and gender recognition is analyzed. © 2008 IEEE.