There’s a lot been written about facial recognition and the like and the problems associated with doing it electronically – but I wonder if anyone has looked into recognizing people by the way they move.
A number of years ago I was on an Underground station in London. With nothing better to do (it was probably the Circle line – there’s often nothing better to do on the Circle line) I was people watching.
For some reason I looked at the office, situated part way down the platform. There was someone inside, talking to an LT official. The person in question had his back to me, and was a good distance away, yet I instally recognized him as an ex-colleague from British Airways called Alan Ainsworth.
I couldn’t hear him, I couldn’t see his face, but I recognized him purely by his movements. This wasn’t a person I was expecting to see – I hadn’t seen him for several years, and I didn’t associate him with Central London.
Admittedly it was a one-off, but if I was able to recognize someone in such difficult conditions, maybe it would provide easier metrics than some of the other recognition technologies.
Wikipedia’s biometrics page lists “gait” as one of the possible “technologies”, but this is not exactly what you mean!
I agree that there are some people who have most amazingly distinctive “expressive-behaviours” – unfortunately most of the rest of us are rather samey… :)
Brian – did yopu establish independently that it was your ex-colleague?
Yes – as it was the Circle line, I was still there when he came out from telling off the LT employee, and was able to have a chat with him, as I hadn’t seen him for several years. However there was no question of this being a ‘coincidence’ story – it was absolutely obvious it was this person when I first saw him, and being short sighted, I don’t normally go around thinking ‘oh that’s X’, because I know I’m hopeless at recognizing people.
I agree with Bron – to the human eye, most people aren’t quite as distinctive in their movements as this person, but I suspect the movements we make do have a kind of signature, and may be more easily measured by biometrics than the face…