First International StepUP Competition for Biometric Footstep Recognition: Methods, Results and Remaining Challenges
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| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2026
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| _version_ | 1866908865868595200 |
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| author | Larracy, Robyn MacDonald, Eve Phinyomark, Angkoon Rezaei, Saeid Laghaei, Mahdi Hajighasem, Ali Tabor, Aaron Scheme, Erik |
| author_facet | Larracy, Robyn MacDonald, Eve Phinyomark, Angkoon Rezaei, Saeid Laghaei, Mahdi Hajighasem, Ali Tabor, Aaron Scheme, Erik |
| contents | Biometric footstep recognition, based on a person's unique pressure patterns under their feet during walking, is an emerging field with growing applications in security and safety. However, progress in this area has been limited by the lack of large, diverse datasets necessary to address critical challenges such as generalization to new users and robustness to shifts in factors like footwear or walking speed. The recent release of the UNB StepUP-P150 dataset, the largest and most comprehensive collection of high-resolution footstep pressure recordings to date, opens new opportunities for addressing these challenges through deep learning. To mark this milestone, the First International StepUP Competition for Biometric Footstep Recognition was launched. Competitors were tasked with developing robust recognition models using the StepUP-P150 dataset that were then evaluated on a separate, dedicated test set designed to assess verification performance under challenging variations, given limited and relatively homogeneous reference data. The competition attracted global participation, with 23 registered teams from academia and industry. The top-performing team, Saeid_UCC, achieved the best equal error rate (EER) of 10.77% using a generative reward machine (GRM) optimization strategy. Overall, the competition showcased strong solutions, but persistent challenges in generalizing to unfamiliar footwear highlight a critical area for future work. |
| format | Preprint |
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arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_11086 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | First International StepUP Competition for Biometric Footstep Recognition: Methods, Results and Remaining Challenges Larracy, Robyn MacDonald, Eve Phinyomark, Angkoon Rezaei, Saeid Laghaei, Mahdi Hajighasem, Ali Tabor, Aaron Scheme, Erik Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Machine Learning Biometric footstep recognition, based on a person's unique pressure patterns under their feet during walking, is an emerging field with growing applications in security and safety. However, progress in this area has been limited by the lack of large, diverse datasets necessary to address critical challenges such as generalization to new users and robustness to shifts in factors like footwear or walking speed. The recent release of the UNB StepUP-P150 dataset, the largest and most comprehensive collection of high-resolution footstep pressure recordings to date, opens new opportunities for addressing these challenges through deep learning. To mark this milestone, the First International StepUP Competition for Biometric Footstep Recognition was launched. Competitors were tasked with developing robust recognition models using the StepUP-P150 dataset that were then evaluated on a separate, dedicated test set designed to assess verification performance under challenging variations, given limited and relatively homogeneous reference data. The competition attracted global participation, with 23 registered teams from academia and industry. The top-performing team, Saeid_UCC, achieved the best equal error rate (EER) of 10.77% using a generative reward machine (GRM) optimization strategy. Overall, the competition showcased strong solutions, but persistent challenges in generalizing to unfamiliar footwear highlight a critical area for future work. |
| title | First International StepUP Competition for Biometric Footstep Recognition: Methods, Results and Remaining Challenges |
| topic | Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Machine Learning |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.11086 |