Activity Recognition: Approaches, Practices and Trends

Activity recognition has attracted increasing attention as a number of related research areas such as pervasive computing, intelligent environments and robotics converge on this critical issue. It is also driven by growing real-world application needs in such areas as ambient assisted living and security surveillance. This chapter aims to provide an overview on existing approaches, current practices and future trends on activity recognition. It is intended to provide the necessary material to inform relevant research communities of the latest developments in this field in addition to providing a reference for researchers and system developers who are working towards the design and development of activity-based context aware applications. The chapter first reviews the existing approaches and algorithms that have been used for activity recognition in a number of related areas. It then describes the practice and lifecycle of the ontology-based approach to activity recognition that has recently been under vigorous investigation. Finally the chapter presents emerging research on activity recognition by outlining various issues and directions the field will take.