Automatic gender and unilateral load state recognition for biometric purposes

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Automatic recognition of a person’s gender as well as his or her unilateral load state are issues that are often analyzed and utilized by a wide range of applications. For years, scientists have recognized human gait patterns for purposes connected to medical diagnoses, rehabilitation, sport, or biometrics. OBJECTIVE: The present paper makes use of ground reaction forces (GRF) generated during human gait to recognize gender or the unilateral load state of a walking person as well as the combination of both of those characteristics. METHODS: To solve the above-stated problem parameters calculated on the basis of all GRF components such as mean, variance, standard deviation of data, peak-to-peak amplitude, skewness, kurtosis, and Hurst exponent as well as leading classification algorithms including kNN, artificial neural networks, decision trees, and random forests, were utilized. Data were collected by means of Kistler’s force plates during a study carried out at the Bialystok University of Technology on a sample of 214 people with a total of 7,316 recorded gait cycles. RESULTS: The best results were obtained with the use of the kNN classifier which recognized the gender of the participant with an accuracy of 99.37%, the unilateral load state with an accuracy reaching 95.74%, and the combination of those two states with an accuracy of 95.31% which, when compared to results achieved by other authors are some of the most accurate. CONCLUSION: The study has shown that the given set of parameters in combination with the kNN classifying algorithm allows for an effective automatic recognition of a person’s gender as well as the presence of an asymmetrical load in the form of a hand-carried briefcase. The presented method can be used as a first stage in biometrics systems.