Your walking style is just as unique as your fingerprint, iris pattern, and voice!
Prior to the pandemic, approximately 450,000 individuals would walk through Times Square in New York City every day! Now, imagine if I told you that each of these 450,000 people had their own completely distinctive way of walking through that area? Yes, every human being on Earth has their own singular and individual walking style!
Gait
Your gait refers to your walking pattern. It is the distinct style in which you, and only you, move across the surface of this planet.
A gait consists of specific movements known as step cycles, or the gait cycle. A cycle starts with lifting and stepping down the right foot (right-foot-forward to rest), followed by the same action with the left foot (left-foot-forward to rest).
A complete count of the right and left steps together makes up one step cycle.
Each individual’s unique gait is influenced by factors such as weight, spinal alignment, limb length, posture, and the nature, speed, style, and regularity of the gait cycle. Additionally, your gait while jogging differs from your gait when walking or running. Your skipping gait is another variation of your gait pattern.
A complete gait cycle. (Photo Credit: Ducky2315/Wikimedia commons)
Gait – A Tool for Identifying Individuals?
You have probably heard of facial recognition, as well as high-security rooms that only open with an authorized person’s eye scan. More common are phones that use fingerprints or facial recognition to unlock the home screen. I remember being fascinated by Edna’s voice recognition door in The Incredibles! Such cameras and scanners work by capturing facial features, iris and retinal patterns, fingerprints, and voice patterns.
So, can we include movement patterns in this list? Can your gait be used to biometrically determine your identity? Yes, absolutely!
People do this all the time. We unconsciously recognize our friends and family by the way they walk, which is as distinct and recognizable to an individual as their sense of style or their laugh.
Now, machines with advanced pattern analysis capabilities are programmed to identify gait, just like software can recognize faces. These gait identification devices can identify people based on their movement.
Sensors even measure the pressure a person applies to their feet when walking or standing, as well as the distribution of that pressure. This is called baropodometry. This information can reveal how a person moves or positions their feet while walking or standing.
A person walking over a pressure sensor. (Photo Credit: envato)
The hope is that gait analysis could be used in the same way as in Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, where a gait analysis corridor guards an encrypted ledger.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Gait Identification
The villain is caught on camera, but the poor camera angle makes it impossible to identify the person. Well, gait analysis might make it unnecessary to identify a person’s face. Someone’s gait can be detected even from poor-quality CCTV footage, whereas facial recognition requires high-quality images, which CCTVs are not known for.
Unlike retinal or iris scanners, which require participants to open their eyes and look directly into a camera, gait analysis does not require “willing” participants. This makes it easier to identify and track criminals in a crowd.
It is also possible to deceive facial and iris recognition technologies by wearing a mask or sunglasses. The scanners cannot identify someone with a covered-up face.
That being said, gait analysis software can also be tricked. By faking a limp or taking unusually long steps, one can deceive the recognition tool by pretending to walk like a completely different person.
However, it is much more difficult to fake your walking style over a long period of time compared to simply wearing sunglasses. After all, it is much more troublesome to limp for a few kilometers than to walk gracefully in sunglasses and a hoodie.
Another advantage is that we can even determine a person’s mood by observing their gait. An angry person rushing off will exert much more pressure on their legs than a defeated person dragging their feet.
With this technology, individuals exhibiting suspicious behavior can be identified in a crowd. An anxious criminal who walks nervously or hesitantly can be spotted among a crowd of people walking confidently. This will be very useful for security purposes and for behavioral psychologists, as a person’s body language can reveal a lot.
Regrettably, it will be challenging to make this technology public. A massive database of everyone’s walking style needs to be established. Without it, there will be no basis for comparing individuals’ distinct walking or running styles, rendering the technology impractical.
Is Gait Unique to Humans Only?
No, humans are not the only ones with recognizable gaits. Horses, elephants, cheetahs… essentially any creature with limbs will possess a distinctive gait.
Animal trackers can identify species and track them across continents solely based on their gait. However, differentiating animals of the same species by their walking style remains extremely difficult. After all, detecting subtle variations in limb movement during animal locomotion is quite challenging. There is ample room for improvement in this area.
Nevertheless, should we allocate limited research resources to this? Why do we need a tool that can identify an animal by its walking style? Well, the possibility does exist. Having such a complex method to track animals is unnecessary unless we are monitoring endangered species.
I suppose not everyone can possess a sophisticated gait.
A Final Remark
A significant amount of research is focused on developing more effective ways to utilize gait as an identification tool, although gait analysis can also serve as a diagnostic tool. It is possible to identify muscular or neurological issues through abnormal gait movements, and gait analysis can now indicate a predisposition to developing Parkinson’s disease.
Asics, a multinational sports company, produces shoes that best match your running style by analyzing each individual’s gait!
Research indicates that gait analysis is a relatively accurate method for tracking people based on their walking style. With this technology, authorities could identify a fully masked thief as they flee from a crime scene due to their unique running style. However, privacy becomes a significant concern as authorities could track ordinary individuals without their consent.
Only time will reveal how this technology will be utilized, but if history and progress have shown anything, it is that new tools always find a way to be used, regardless of the consequences they may bring.