As a new technology of biometrics

gait recognition has its predominance among other biometric technologies while in computer vision research field it is a hard problem.Those two characteristics are analyzed at first.Then

the gait recognition problem is expounded in four aspects which are essentially involved in designing a pattern recognition system: the choice of sensors

preprocessing technique

data representation scheme

and decision making model.The emphases are in the section concerning gait data representation

in which approaches to the gait recognition problem from the point of view of computer vision are broadly classified as being either model-based or holistic.Every class is illustrated in detail

and the merits and defects of each example are pointed out.The information of structure component and the information of the motion dynamics of the body extracted in those approaches are also explained.Thirdly

the performance evaluation standard and available database are discussed.At last

a few weaknesses in the gait recognition research field are proposed

and future areas of research are also put forward.