First deployment of pressure-based gait biometrics for access control unveiled by Stepscan

Stepscan Technologies has announced the deployment of a new pressure-based gait biometric access control system.

Dubbed Stepscan Secure, the solution can reportedly capture the movement of multiple subjects as well as analyze their unique under-foot and gait features for biometric identification purposes.

“Stepscan technology has been commercially available in the medical market supporting the rehabilitation of injured and weakened patients for some time,” explained the company’s CEO Crystal Trevors.

The gait biometric system has now been deployed in the new $39 million Cyber Centre in Fredericton, Canada.

Stepscan Secure represents a world-first in that it is a multi-tile, expandable pressure-sensitive flooring system that also features tracking and identification capabilities.

“Stepscan is the only company producing pressure-sensitive flooring that is large enough to capture many footsteps of natural gait,” Trevors said.

“Based on the above features of our Stepscan platform and previous research supported by NSERC we have shown that we can analyze various features of a person’s gait and foot/floor interactions and differentiate individuals just by their walking patterns,” the CEO explained.

The deployment of the technology in the Cyber Centre is the first access control application of Stepscan Secure gait biometrics.

“It is innovative initiatives such as this that we want the Cyber Centre to be utilized for,” commented Larry Shaw, CEO of Ignite Fredericton and Knowledge Park.

“Cyber Centre is the largest project in Canada dedicated to cyber security and digital innovation between universities, governments, and business,” he added.

The installation is reportedly a part of a $1.5 million research partnership with the University of New Brunswick and Cyber NB and involves funding from several academic institutions.

It will allow Stepscan to complete the final testing of its Secure platform before full commercialization.

Stepscan was formerly known as ViTRAK, and has been previously used in rehabilitation processes.

This post was updated at 8:51am Eastern on August 31, 2021 to clarify Stepscan’s relationship with ViTRAK.

Article Topics

access control  |  biometric identification  |  biometrics  |  gait recognition  |  research and development