Astonishing: Chinese people are identified by their walk

The smart person recognition in China no longer only runs through face identification. A new start-up specialized in artic intelligence (AI) has the technology ready to recognize people on the basis of their walk. To remain unrecognizable in China becomes even more difficult.

The Chinese company Watrix is convinced that their software can recognize a person from 50 meters away through his or her run. The identification is done via ‘loop recognition’. Thousands of measurement data about a person’s movement are automatically analyzed and tracked: from the body contours to the corner of the arm movement. It is also checked whether the step goes inwards or outwards. All that data goes to a gigantic database from which identification follows, says co-founder Huang Yonghzen to the newspaper South China Morning Post.

The technology has already been tested by the police in the million cities of Beijing, Shanghai, and Chongqing, with promising results as a result. Watrix wants to use the technology to simplify the detection of the estimated 300,000 fugitive criminals (out of a population of 1.4 billion). The start-up rolled out the 2.0 version of their software last week. It supports the real-time of what surveillance cameras in cities transmit, it sounds.

200 million observation cameras

In the long run, the Chinese government wants to be able to identify every citizen within three seconds. The state can rely on the estimated 200 million observation cameras and a network of big data. In various provinces, a social credit system has been in effect since last year. For example, passers-by who cross over repeatedly in red light and are detected are particularly difficult. Not only are images of their offense displayed alongside their identity on screens in the city, but they also fall on the social ladder, so that they are barely able to purchase train or plane tickets.

At the beginning of 2017, the Chinese People’s Court of Appeal announced that 6.15 million Chinese citizens were banned from aircraft because of social misconduct. China is fully committed to the development of artificial intelligence, an evolution that the United States follows with suspicion.