26/01/2012

A team of researchers has designed software that can recognise people by their shoes.

The Bootstrapper technology is the brainchild of Stephan Richter, Christian Holz and Patrick Baudisch from the Hasso Plattner Institute in Germany as a way to enable "personalised functionality" when using a tabletop computer.

It works by utilising a Kinect camera aimed at the floor. This takes an RGB image and a depth raw image to help identify users' shoes.

The software can also match screen touches with shoe position to allow individual performance to be monitored when multiple users are on the same computer.

This, its makers say, gives it an application in the classroom – allowing teachers to track the performance of individual pupils working in groups.

The researchers said: "In order to enable personalised functionality, such as to log tabletop activity by user, tabletop systems need to recognise users."

During testing, Bootstrapper was able to identify users from a database of 18 people with 89 per cent accuracy.