Person identification based on the matching of foot strike timings obtained by LRFs and a smartphone

This paper describes a person identification method using a smartphone and laser range finders (LRFs) for a mobile service robot. The robot is equipped with LRFs and the target person holds a smartphone. The method first detects the foot strike timings of the target person using the smartphone and those of all people by using the LRFs. By finding the person whose foot strike timings captured by the LRFs are similar to those obtained by the smartphone, the robot can identify the target person. Person identification experiments and person following experiments are conducted in order to validate the method. Since the method only requires a person to simply hold a smartphone, it can be easily applied to daily situations.