Real-time human action recognition using CNN over temporal images for static video surveillance cameras

Abstract

This paper proposes a real-time human action recognition approach to static video surveillance systems. This approach predicts human actions using temporal images and convolutional neural networks (CNN). CNN is a type of deep learning model that can automatically learn features from training videos. Although the state-of-the-art methods have shown high accuracy, they consume a lot of computational resources. Another problem is that many methods assume that exact knowledge of human positions. Moreover, most of the current methods build complex handcrafted features for specific classifiers. Therefore, these kinds of methods are difficult to apply in real-world applications. In this paper, a novel CNN model based on temporal images and a hierarchical action structure is developed for real-time human action recognition. The hierarchical action structure includes three levels: action layer, motion layer, and posture layer. The top layer represents subtle actions; the bottom layer represents posture. Each layer contains one CNN, which means that this model has three CNNs working together; layers are combined to represent many different kinds of action with a large degree of freedom. The developed approach was implemented and achieved superior performance for the ICVL action dataset; the algorithm can run at around 20 frames per second.