Automatic recognition by gait: progress and prospects

Recognising people by their gait is a biometric of increasing interest. Recently, analysis has progressed from evaluation by few techniques on small databases with encouraging results to large databases and still with encouraging results. The potential of gait as a biometric was encouraged by the considerable amount of evidence available, especially in biomechanics and literature. This potential motivated the development of new databases, new technique and more rigorous evaluation procedures. We adumbrate some of the new techniques we have developed and their evaluation to gain insight into the potential for gait as a biometric. In particular, we consider implications for the future. Our work, as with others, continues to provide encouraging results for gait as a biometric, let alone as a human identifier, with a special regard for recognition at a distance.