A survey of human motion analysis using depth imagery

Abstract

Analysis of human behaviour through visual information has been a highly active research topic in the computer vision community. This was previously achieved via images from a conventional camera, however recently depth sensors have made a new type of data available. This survey starts by explaining the advantages of depth imagery, then describes the new sensors that are available to obtain it. In particular, the Microsoft Kinect has made high-resolution real-time depth cheaply available. The main published research on the use of depth imagery for analysing human activity is reviewed. Much of the existing work focuses on body part detection and pose estimation. A growing research area addresses the recognition of human actions. The publicly available datasets that include depth imagery are listed, as are the software libraries that can acquire it from a sensor. This survey concludes by summarising the current state of work on this topic, and pointing out promising future research directions. For both researchers and practitioners who are familiar with this topic and those who are new to this field, the review will aid in the selection, and development, of algorithms using depth data.