How you walk could shape the future of biometrics: experts

Canadians have been unlocking iPhones with their fingerprint since 2013 and are sometimes exposed to facial recognition software before boarding planes. But when it comes to biometric technology, two Canadian experts are researching what could be the future of biometric security: footsteps.

Canadians have been unlocking iPhones with their fingerprint since 2013 and are sometimes exposed to facial recognition software before boarding planes, but when it comes to biometric technology, Erik Scheme and Mayssa Rekik are one step ahead.

The associate director of the University of New Brunswick's Institute of Biomedical Engineering and the advanced technologies undergraduate student are part of a team researching what could be the future of biometric security: footsteps.

They installed electronic tiles from P.E.I.'s Stepscan Technologies at their university lab and in the lobby of Fredericton's Cyber Centre to generate a pixel-by-pixel heat map of the pressure distribution of someone's feet as they walk.

The heel-to-toe data they are capturing will help develop 3D models of the people walking across the tiles and deep learning frameworks that can differentiate one person's walk from another to identify individuals based on gait.

"Whether that's different footwear or carrying different objects or walking in a distracted way, we're trying to build the world's largest data set to make publicly available to the research community, so that we can move this discipline forward," Scheme said.

Interest in biometric technology, which relies on unique physical characteristics like a person's gait, retina, face, heartbeat or voice, is growing in part because most businesses rely on keys, cards, pin codes or personnel to broker access to their spaces or systems.

The methods often leave people rummaging through bags for keys and cards, trying to recall passwords or seeking help from system administrators or security guards, when they're without their means of entry.