Shoe recognition instead of face recognition

Face recognition used in public places creates a lot of privacy concerns. A team of researchers solved the problem of tracking people by recognizing their shoes instead of faces.

08 January 2012. NS -- The team developed a system called Bootstrapper which works out who's standing where using a downward-facing Kinect camera to recognise their shoes. By measuring how a shoe distorts the infrared grid projected by Kinect's depth camera, Bootstrapper acquires unique, high-resolution 3D images of each person's footwear. Early tests show the system has an accuracy of 96 per cent.

I don't think the system will be a big commercial success, but the solution looks very clever. 

tags: problem, solution, detection, information