In computer vision, video-based approaches have been widely explored for the
early classification and the prediction of actions or activities. However, it
remains unclear whether this modality (as compared to 3D kinematics) can still
be reliable for the prediction of human intentions, defined as the overarching
goal embedded in an action sequence. Since the same action can be performed
with different intentions, this problem is more challenging but yet affordable
as proved by quantitative cognitive studies which exploit the 3D kinematics
acquired through motion capture systems. In this paper, we bridge cognitive and
computer vision studies, by demonstrating the effectiveness of video-based
approaches for the prediction of human intentions. Precisely, we propose
Intention from Motion, a new paradigm where, without using any contextual
information, we consider instantaneous grasping motor acts involving a bottle
in order to forecast why the bottle itself has been reached (to pass it or to
place in a box, or to pour or to drink the liquid inside). We process only the
grasping onsets casting intention prediction as a classification framework.
Leveraging on our multimodal acquisition (3D motion capture data and 2D optical
videos), we compare the most commonly used 3D descriptors from cognitive
studies with state-of-the-art video-based techniques. Since the two analyses
achieve an equivalent performance, we demonstrate that computer vision tools
are effective in capturing the kinematics and facing the cognitive problem of
human intention prediction.Comment: 2017 IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Workshop