Human activity classification with miniature inertial sensors

Abstract

This thesis provides a comparative study on activity recognition using miniature inertial sensors (gyroscopes and accelerometers) and magnetometers worn on the human body. The classification methods used and compared in this study are: a rule-based algorithm (RBA) or decision tree, least-squares method (LSM), k-nearest neighbor algorithm (k-NN), dynamic time warping (DTW- 1 and DTW-2), and support vector machines (SVM). In the first part of this study, eight different leg motions are classified using only two single-axis gyroscopes. In the second part, human activities are classified using five sensor units worn on different parts of the body. Each sensor unit comprises a tri-axial gyroscope, a tri-axial accelerometer and a tri-axial magnetometer. Different feature sets extracted from the raw sensor data and these are used in the classification process. A number of feature extraction and reduction techniques (principal component analysis) as well as different cross-validation techniques have been implemented and compared. A performance comparison of these classification methods is provided in terms of their correct differentiation rates, confusion matrices, pre-processing and training times and classification times. Among the classification techniques we have considered and implemented, SVM, in general, gives the highest correct differentiation rate, followed by k-NN. The classification time for RBA is the shortest, followed by SVM or LSM, k-NN or DTW-1, and DTW-2 methods. SVM requires the longest training time, whereas DTW-2 takes the longest amount of classification time. Although there is not a significant difference between the correct differentiation rates obtained by different crossvalidation techniques, repeated random sub-sampling uses the shortest amount of classification time, whereas leave-one-out requires the longest.