Human activity analysis is an important problem in computer
vision with applications in surveillance and summarization
and indexing of consumer content. Complex human
activities are characterized by non-linear dynamics
that make learning, inference and recognition hard. In this
paper, we consider the problem of modeling and recognizing
complex activities which exhibit time-varying dynamics.
To this end, we describe activities as outputs of linear dynamic
systems (LDS) whose parameters vary with time, or
a Time-Varying Linear Dynamic System (TV-LDS). We discuss
parameter estimation methods for this class of models
by assuming that the parameters are locally time-invariant.
Then, we represent the space of LDS models as a Grassmann
manifold. Then, the TV-LDS model is defined as a
trajectory on the Grassmann manifold. We show how trajectories
on the Grassmannian can be characterized using
appropriate distance metrics and statistical methods that
reflect the underlying geom...