Abstract
There are very few studies that examine gait outside of the laboratory setting. The majority of gait studies are set up to observe gait in a very patterned style, so that subjects primarily follow a straight path on the treadmill or outdoors, and employ little to no head movement. The lack of information about “natural” gait patterns and the impact of other variables such as dress, shoes, and carrying items, question the validity of current gait recognition rates. Likewise, the continued concentration on artificial or overly constrained data adds to the potential of developing algorithms that do not generalize to real-life scenarios. We observed the gait patterns of 98 subjects walking to and from a variety of public transportation entrances. Among subjects observed for the study, less than half walked a straight line for more than 6 strides and almost 80% of all subjects moved their heads while walking. This study offers important information about natural gait tendencies in humans and the importance of gathering gait data outside of the traditional laboratory setting.