Step right up
Published April 30, 2020
Cory Doctorow predicted this in his novel Little Brother, and now Carnegie Mellon researchers are working to make it real: Being able to identify people by how they walk.Each person’s walking gait is unique—and they can serve not only as identifiers but also as indicators of mood and health. A team of researchers has now developed remote sensors that analyze footsteps by measuring minute floor vibrations. They have used those vibrations to identify specific individuals walking through a building.Sure, it could be used by governments and corporations to track someone’s every move, but “the researchers only suggest their technology should be used for consensual health care applications.”
