Convolutional Neural Network Bootstrapped by Dynamic Segmentation and Stigmergy-Based Encoding for Real-Time Human Activity Recognition in Smart Homes

Abstract

Recently, deep learning (DL) approaches have been extensively employed to recognize human activities in smart buildings, which greatly broaden the scope of applications in this field. Convolutional neural networks (CNN), well known for feature extraction and activity classification, have been applied for estimating human activities. However, most CNN-based techniques usually focus on divided sequences associated to activities, since many real-world employments require information about human activities in real time. In this work, an online human activity recognition (HAR) framework on streaming sensor is proposed. The methodology incorporates real-time dynamic segmentation, stigmergy-based encoding, and classification with a CNN2D. Dynamic segmentation decides if two succeeding events belong to the same activity segment or not. Then, because a CNN2D requires a multi-dimensional format in input, stigmergic track encoding is adopted to build encoded features in a multi-dimensional format. It adopts the directed weighted network (DWN) that takes into account the human spatio-temporal tracks with a requirement of overlapping activities. It represents a matrix that describes an activity segment. Once the DWN for each activity segment is determined, a CNN2D with a DWN in input is adopted to classify activities. The proposed approach is applied to a real case study: the “Aruba” dataset from the CASAS database.