The work is motivated by the observation that a human observer can easily and instantly recognize action in extremely low resolution imagery with no strong features or information about the three-dimensional structure of the scene. Our underlying representations for action are view-based template descriptions of the coarse image motion. This coarsely describes the spatial distribution of motion energy for a given view of a given action. Any stored MEIs that plausibly match the unknown input MEI are then tested for a coarse, motion history agreement with a known motion model of the action. The MHI is a static image template where pixel intensity is a function of the recency of motion in a sequence.
Recognition is accomplished in a feature-based statistical framework.
For an in-depth examination of the approach and results, see the paper The Representation and Recognition of Action Using Temporal Templates . Also see the related publications . The motion template technology has been used to recognize human movements within interactive environments such as Virtual PAT and The KidsRoom . Blurred sequence 1.3MB Quicktime , 0.1MB MPEG . When shown this video, the vast majority of a room full of spectators could identify the action in less than one second from the start of the sequence.