Identification device and application thereof

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The present invention relates to an identification device for the individualized identification of items of clothing, shoe inserts or similar objects to be worn on a person's body.

As a result of industrial mass production it is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish “one's own” (branded) athletics shoes from those of others who are engaged in the same sport and have chosen the same brand. The same problem arises in the case of knitwear, pants, gloves and the like.

One possible means of identifying, e.g., a textile item of clothing consists in embroidering a monogram onto it. However, this is extraordinarily laborious, and always requires close examination. Furthermore, it is very likely that different people with slightly different names will use the same monogram.

The object of the present invention is to provide an identification device such that easy recognizability is very likely to ensured along with a high degree of individualization.

According to a first aspect of the present invention there is provided an identification device for individualizing the identification of a personal item such as clothing, shoes, shoe inserts and similar objects to be worn on a person's body, comprising an image of a pressure-distribution pattern obtained by at least one at least two-dimensional sampling of a pressure distribution between a part of a person's body and a substantially solid object.

Surprisingly, it turns out that such a “pattern”, consisting of a limited number of points or area elements, firstly has an extremely high recognition value, and also is nearly as typical of the individual person as a fingerprint. Whereas a fingerprint can be distinguished from another person's fingerprint only by a specialist, it is extraordinarily easy to distinguish the pressure-distribution patterns of various people. Devices with which to implement this measurement procedure are disclosed, e.g., in the patent EP 0264047 B1 and the additional documents cited therein.

The discrimination becomes especially simple, and the individualization function especially effective, when pressures of different magnitude are represented by area elements of different colors or shadings. In contrast to a fingerprint, this representation makes available a third dimension, namely the color or shading, and humans are capable of memorizing such distributions of color or structural patterns very well and distinguishing them from other patterns.

According to a second aspect of the present invention there is provided a method of manufacturing an identification device for the individualizing identification of a personal item to be worn on a person's body, comprising the steps of

measuring a pressure-distribution pattern by an at least two-dimensional sampling of a pressure distribution between a part of the person's body and a substantially solid object; storing the pressure-distribution pattern; and producing an image of the pressure-distribution pattern, in which different high pressures are represented graphically.

The sampling of the pressure distribution preferably comprises a plurality of scans of various pressure distributions that occur during the course of a movement in which contact between the body part and the substantially rigid object is established and then abolished. This process can be visualized very readily, for example, by imagining the sequence of movements that occurs during walking, and the changing two-dimensional distributions of pressure under the foot that are produced during this activity. For the actual measurement it is possible, for instance, to take the means of the pressures at each measurement point over the entire course of the movement, or else to use only the peak values, and convert these to color values or different shadings that are then assembled to produce a “static” image, which can serve as the identification device.

Such an identification device, i.e. such an image, can then for example be used directly, by printing it onto an item of clothing, or a commercially available printer can be used to print it on film which is then “ironed onto” the clothing.

It is obviously useful and particularly advantageous to employ the identification device to identify a shoe or a removable insole, in which case the pressure-distribution pattern is that measured under the foot during walking. Given that the pressure-distribution pattern is very person-specific, especially in the case of dynamic processes, for instance, walking, there is no need to store the pattern so as to be able to use it again when new shoes are purchased; instead, the pattern can be produced anew each time, for example in the shoe store itself, which is particularly simple. The resulting pattern will recognizably resemble the pattern previously obtained. This pattern can be attached to the insole either as a reduced image or in the original scale, so that it covers the whole insole.

When the identification device is used to identify a pair of pants, for example, it is useful to measure the pressure distribution when the wearer sits down and stands up again or during parts of this movement sequence, or else to obtain a static pattern of the pressure distribution. This pressure-distribution pattern, in turn, as an identification device can be printed on the clothing either to scale or in any desired reduction/enlargement. The same applies to gloves, on the palm or back surface of which can be printed the pressure distribution measured when an object is grasped or the surface of the hand is pressed against an object.

In the following the invention is described by way of example with reference to the accompanying drawings.

FIG. 1 shows an identification device in the form of a first “footprint” picture;

FIG. 2 shows an identification device in the form of a footprint picture of a person other than that of the picture shown in FIG. 1 ;

FIG. 3 shows the footprint according to FIG. 1 in another representation;

FIG. 4 shows an identification device with a sitting-surface distribution pattern; and

FIG. 5 shows an identification device with a hand-pressure distribution.

The pressure-distribution patterns shown in FIG. 1 and FIG. 2 represent peak values produced when the foot is rolled on a substrate during a stepping process. As is evident in the drawings, the two pressure-distribution patterns are very different. This is not ascribable to differences in the shapes of the feet; those differences would be much smaller and very difficult to discern. Instead, by means of the special method used here to produce the image, and hence the identification device, the individual course of movement, i.e. the “muscle-activation pattern”, is also detected, so that not only the shape (as in the case of a fingerprint) but also the way in which the person “uses” the body is represented.

The picture shown in FIG. 3 differs from that in FIG. 1 in that instead of color values or—the only possibility for the attached figures, for technical reasons—gray values, here the measured pressures are represented by differently patterned shading. In this case, as well, the recognition value is very high.

In the picture shown in FIG. 4 the pressure distribution on the seat of a rolling chair is represented. Here, again, various people differ to an astonishing degree from one another, because again the play of the muscles, the elasticity/stiffness of the various body zones and similar factors also contribute to the image.

In FIG. 5 the pressure distribution is that between the palm of a hand and a (stiff) substrate, which can be used for instance as an identification device to identify gloves. In particular, the identification of a glove on the inner surface or also on the outer surface of the hand in a substantially 1:1 reproduction is preferred, because in this way it is easily possible to recognize one's own glove even among many that are similarly printed.

At this juncture it should once again be emphasized that a “footprint” according to one of the FIGS. 1 to 3 can very well be used as identification device not only for shoes or removable insoles, but also to identify other kinds of clothing. This is because the recognition value of such foot images is very high, and the differences between the images obtained from different people as described above are very great.