MOBILE phones will soon be able to recognise their owners by the way they walk, say scientists who unveiled a security sensor which responds to a person's movements.
The technology, developed by Finnish researchers, would disable equipment if it sensed the person using it was not the owner, helping to cut crime by preventing unauthorised use of portable devices such as laptops and mobile phones.
The inventors say the system could also be adapted for credit cards in the future so it could verify a user's identity based on their physical movements before approval of payment transactions.
Heikki Ailisto, a professor at VTT, the Technical Research Centre of Finland, said the principal advantage was that it provided an effective identification method but did not require the user to perform a specific task like entering a password.
"It is better in the sense it is unobtrusive and implicit - people are lazy about using passwords, fingerprint sensors, anything which requires explicit action."
The system has to be found to recognise the legitimate user in about 90 per cent of cases. Its creators admit that its effectiveness can be hampered by factors such as a change from high heels to trainers or a leg injury, but a pass-code system is included as back-up.
"The performance is not as good as fingerprint, but about equal with real-world speaker recognition systems," said Mr Ailisto.
Costing less than 60p per unit, the device has an acceleration sensor which automatically records an individual's "movement signal" the first time the phone is used.
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