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(2019·南京、盐城二模)Listen carefully to the footsteps in the family home, especially if it has wooden floors, and you can probably work out who it is that is walking about.The features most commonly used to identify people are faces, voices, finger prints and retinal scans.But their “behavioural biometrics”， such as the way they walk, are also giveaways.
Researchers have, for several years, used video cameras and computers to analyse people's gaits, and are now quite good at it.But translating such knowledge into a practical identification system can be tricky — especially if that system is supposed to be hidden.Cameras are often visible, are hard to set up, require good lighting and may have their view blocked by other people.So a team led by Krikor Ozanyan of the University of Manchester, in England and Patricia Scully of the National University of Ireland, in Galway have been looking for a better way to recognise gait.Their answer: pressuresensitive mats.
In themselves, such mats are nothing new.They have been part of security systems for donkeys' years.But Dr Ozanyan and Dr Scully use a complex version that can record the amount of pressure applied in different places as someone walks across it.These measurements form a pattern unique to the walker.Dr Ozanyan and Dr Scully therefore turned, as is now common for anything to do with pattern recognition, to an Artificial Intelligence system that uses machine learning to recognise such patterns.
It seems to work.In a study published earlier this year the two researchers tested their system on a database of footsteps trodden by 127 different people.They found that its error rate in identifying who was who was a mere 0.7%.And Dr Scully says that even without a database of footsteps to work with the system can determine someone's sex — women and men, with wide and narrow pelvises (骨盆) respectively, walk in different ways — and guess, with reasonable accuracy, a subject's age.
A matbased gaitrecognition system has the advantage that it would work in any lighting conditions — even pitchdarkness.And though it might fail to identify someone if, say, she was wearing stilettos and had been entered into the database while wearing trainers, it would be very hard to fool it by imitating the gait of an individual who was allowed admission to a particular place.
The latest phase of Dr Ozanyan's and Dr Scully's project is a redesign of the mat.The old mats contained individual pressure sensors.The new ones contain optical fibres(光纤)．Lightemitting diodes (二极管) distributed along two neighbouring edges of a mat transmit light into the fibres.Sensors on the opposite edges (and thus the opposite ends of the optical fibres) measure how much of that light is received.Any pressure applied to part of the mat causes a distortion (变形) in the fibres and a consequent change in the amount of light transmitted.Both the location and amount of change can be plotted and analyzed by the machinelearning system.
Dr.Ozanyan says that the team have built a demonstration fibreoptic mat, two meters long and a metre wide, using materials that cost ￡100(＄130)．They are now talking to companies about commercializing it.One application might be in health care, particularly for the elderly.A fibreoptic mat installed in a nursing home or an old person's own residence could monitor changes in an individual's gait that warn certain illnesses.That would provide early warning of someone being at greater risk of falling over, say, or of their cognition becoming damaged.
Gait analysis might also be used as a security measure in the workplace, monitoring access to restricted areas, such as parts of military bases, server farms or laboratories dealing with harmful materials.In these cases, employees would need to agree to their gaits being scanned, just as they would agree to the scanning of their faces or retinas for optical security systems.
Perhaps the most fascinating use of gaitrecognition mats, though, would be in public places, such as airports.For that to work, the footsteps of those to be recognised would need to have been stored in a database, which would be harder to arrange than the collection of mugshots and fingerprints that existing airport security systems rely on.Some people, however, might volunteer for it.Many aircrew or preregistered frequent flyers would welcome anything that speeded up one of the most tiresome parts of modern travel.
语篇解读：本文主要介绍了一种新的识别方法：步态识别。
1．Camerabased gait recognition fails to come into wide use, because ________.
a．it's not easy to find the cameras
b．finger print recognition is still popular
c．sometimes the cameras can be covered
d．it's a waste of money to fix the equipment
e．good lighting conditions can't be guaranteed
f．it's difficult to set up the system
A．a、c、f B．b、d、e
C．c、d、f D．c、e、f
解析：选D 细节理解题。根据第二段的一开始的三句话可知，虽然人们已经很擅长利用摄像机和计算机来分析人们的步态，但是将这些知识转化为实际的识别系统可能很难。主要有这样几个原因：cameras are hard to set up, require good lighting, may have their view blocked by other people。
2．Which of the following statements is TRUE according to Paragraphs 6－8?
A．The new mats function greatly with individual pressure sensors built in.
B．The new mats will be likely to work better with enough pressure.
C．The elderly are cured of their diseases with the monitor of the fibreoptic.
D．Restricted areas are accessible to those with their gaits scanned beforehand.
解析：选D 细节理解题。根据第八段第二句“In these cases, employees would need to agree to their gaits being scanned, ...”可知在这些场合，员工(的步态)需要和(之前)扫描过的步态一致。即：事先扫描过步态的人可以进入禁区。
3．What does “it” refer to in Paragraph 5?
A．The matbased gaitrecognition system.
B．The gait stored in the database.
C．The advantage of working in any light condition.
D．The admission to a particular place.
解析：选A 代词指代题。阅读第五段的内容可知这个“it”是表示指代的，代替上文中所提到过的名词短语“A matbased gaitrecognition system”。
4．What's the best title of the passage?
A．Listen to your footsteps
B．Applaud pattern recognition
C．Love the way you walk
D．Better the mats you step on
解析：选C 标题归纳题。本文主要介绍了一种新的安全识别方法：步态识别。这种识别方法可以用在公共场所，而且比传统的指纹识别方法速度更快，受到人们的欢迎。所以你走路的姿态将来可以成为识别你的一种方法，所以要珍惜、爱你自己的步态。用“Love the way you walk”作为标题，能够表达文章的主题。
