Utilizing motion data retrieval techniques for person identification

Identifying a specific user is an old but challenging problem, and its applications are ubiquitous in our daily lives. Conventional person identification methods are using an ID card or the combination of a username and password. Recently, new techniques based on biometrics have been introduced so that people do not need to worry if they forget their username and password. For example, fingerprint and iris recognition are becoming common methods of person identification; however, users are usually required to interact with a system to use these traits. In some non-critical situations, it may be more convenient to utilize soft biometrics for person identification, although these features are not as unique for a specific person. In this work, we propose to conduct gait analysis that can be performed from a distance without disturbing user activities. We utilize depth cameras to capture user movements and create motion sequences. Then, a motion sequence is transformed to a motion string with appropriate data preprocessing and clustering techniques. Representative motion strings representing the individual behaviour of a user are retrieved and utilized to identify people. Empirical studies based on real motion data show that our approach performs well in person identification.