Human activity recognition from 3D data: A review

•This survey paper summarizes techniques in human activity recognition from 3D data.•Focus on recent development in human activity recognition techniques on depth data.•Broad categories of algorithms are identified based on the use of features.•Pros and cons of the algorithms in each category are analyzed.•Possible direction of future research is indicated.

Human activity recognition has been an important area of computer vision research since the 1980s. Various approaches have been proposed with a great portion of them addressing this issue via conventional cameras. The past decade has witnessed a rapid development of 3D data acquisition techniques. This paper summarizes the major techniques in human activity recognition from 3D data with a focus on techniques that use depth data. Broad categories of algorithms are identified based upon the use of different features. The pros and cons of the algorithms in each category are analyzed and the possible direction of future research is indicated.