Recognising human and animal movement by symmetry

We show how the symmetry of motion can be extracted by using the Generalised Symmetry Operator for analysing motion and for gait recognition. This operator, rather than relying on the borders of a shape or on general appearance, locates features by their symmetrical properties. This approach is reinforced by the view from psychology that human gait is a symmetrical pattern of motion, and by other works. We applied our new method to compare animal gait, and for recognition by gait. Results show that the symmetry properties of gait appear to be unique and can indeed be used for analysis and for recognition. We have so far achieved promising recognition rates of over 95%. Performance analysis also suggests that symmetry enjoys practical advantages such as relative immunity to noise with capability to handle occlusion and as such might prove suitable for applications like clip-database browsing.