News and insight into biometric identification and authentication

Start-up develops new gait technology

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Plantiga Technologies, a start-up company based in Vancouver, has announced the development of a new security and defense technology utilizing gait biometrics. The new system is based on footwear that generates walking and movement patterns, or gait patterns, that are communicated to a system that identifies the individual based on their biometric profile.

The usage of footwear to communicate gait information to a system is what makes the new technology different from other gait biometric systems which depend on visual analysis of an individual’s gait via cameras.


One of the major advantages over other systems that Plantiga is touting in their new system is that it is capable of identifying a person at any time no matter where they are.

Due to this, the company sees its technology as having benefits beyond basic identification wherein their system could help track personnel behavior by recording where they have been, what they have been doing and when they were doing it. The new technology is in its product development stage, but Plantiga expects a working prototype ready by this fall. [end] 

NEC Corporation, a technology development company, has announced the creation of the NEC Biometrics Excellence Center, a core engineering competency center, in Bangalore, India.

The new center is intended to help drive the expansion of NEC’s multi-modal biometric solutions and security solutions business. The creation of the center is being touted as a first step towards NEC’s recently set goal of growing their public safety business. Additionally, similar centers are being planned for development in five other regions.  

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In response to the growing role of biometrics with national security and military operations, the U.S. Department of Defense will create an agency designed to handle integration and synchronization of the new technologies into operations, according to an ExecutiveGov article.

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The Central Scientific Instruments Organization (CSIO) is developing surveillance technology that will biometrically identify wanted or potentially dangerous people via their gait, or posture and walk, according to a Time of India article.

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Researchers at the Vidya Vikas Institute of Engineering & Technology and the S J College of Engineering in India have claimed to develop gait biometrics, a modality that identifies individuals from their style of walking, according to VNUNet.com. By taking a series of side view shots of someone’s walk cycle in conjunction with their body size, they claim they can identify an individual from a distance.

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Dublin will see a new integrated smart card ticketing system by early next year, according to The Irish Times.

The the €55 million project will start with a smart card rollout for the Luas and Dublin Bus services, to be joined later by Irish Rail, private bus operators and Bus Éireann.

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A facial recognition system developed by California-based biometric technology developer Airborne Biometrics Group (ABG) is seeing use in a number of industries including government, casinos, transportation and corporations, according to a Las Vegas Review-Journal article.

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