Human action recognition in table-top scenarios: An HMM-based analysis to optimize the performance

Abstract

Hidden Markov models have been extensively and successfully used for the recognition of human actions. Though there exist wellestablished algorithms to optimize the transition and output probabilities, the type of features to use and specifically the number of states and Gaussian have to be chosen manually. Here we present a quantitative study on selecting the optimal feature set for recognition of simple object manipulation actions pointing, rotating and grasping in a tabletop scenario. This study has resulted in recognition rate higher than 90%. Also three different parameters, namely the number of states and Gaussian for HMM and the number of training iterations, are considered for optimization of the recognition rate with 5 different feature sets on our motion capture data set from 10 persons. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.