Human Activity Recognition Based on Symbolic Representation Algorithms for Inertial Sensors

Mobile sensing has allowed the emergence of a variety of solutions related to the monitoring and recognition of human activities (HAR). Such solutions have been implemented in smartphones for the purpose of better understanding human behavior. However, such solutions still suffer from the limitations of the computing resources found on smartphones. In this sense, the HAR area has focused on the development of solutions of low computational cost. In general, the strategies used in the solutions are based on shallow and deep learning algorithms. The problem is that not all of these strategies are feasible for implementation in smartphones due to the high computational cost required, mainly, by the steps of data preparation and the training of classification models. In this context, this article evaluates a new set of alternative strategies based on Symbolic Aggregate Approximation (SAX) and Symbolic Fourier Approximation (SFA) algorithms with the purpose of developing solutions with low computational cost in terms of memory and processing. In addition, this article also evaluates some classification algorithms adapted to manipulate symbolic data, such as SAX-VSM, BOSS, BOSS-VS and WEASEL. Experiments were performed on the UCI-HAR, SHOAIB and WISDM databases commonly used in the literature to validate HAR solutions based on smartphones. The results show that the symbolic representation algorithms are faster in the feature extraction phase, on average, by 84.81%, and reduce the consumption of memory space, on average, by 94.48%, and they have accuracy rates equivalent to conventional algorithms.