Real-Time Machine Learning for Human Activities Recognition Based on Wrist-Worn Wearable Devices

Abstract

Wearable technologies have slowly invaded our lives and can easily help with our day-to-day tasks. One area where wearable devices can shine is in human activity recognition, as they can gather sensor data in a non-intrusive way. We describe a real-time activity recognition system based on a common wearable device: a smartwatch. This is one of the most inconspicuous devices suitable for activity recognition as it is very common and worn for extensive periods of time. We propose a human activity recognition system that is extensible, due to the wide range of sensing devices that can be integrated, and that provides a flexible deployment system. The machine learning component recognizes activity based on plot images generated from raw sensor data. This service is exposed as a Web API that can be deployed locally or directly in the cloud. The proposed system aims to simplify the human activity recognition process by exposing such capabilities via a web API. This web API can be consumed by small-network-enabled wearable devices, even with basic processing capabilities, by leveraging a simple data contract interface and using raw data. The system replaces extensive pre-processing by leveraging high performance image recognition based on plot images generated from raw sensor data. We have managed to obtain an activity recognition rate of 94.89% and to implement a fully functional real-time human activity recognition system.