A real-time spike-timing classifier of spatio-temporal patterns

Considering the problem of recognizing non-verbal cues in Human-Robot Interaction applications, this paper proposes a novel real-time unsupervised spike timing neural network for recognition and early detection of spatio-temporal human gestures. Two spiking network classifiers one based on Izhikevich neuron model, and the other one based on Integrate-and-Fire-or-Burst neuron model have been implemented in CUDA, and allow the classification to be performed in real-time. To evaluate the performance of this proposal, we test the case of a physical robot observing air-handwritings of human gesture. The proposed approaches run in real-time, thus they are suitable for human-robot applications; they allow real-time early classifying human gestures and actions while they require a very small number of training samples. In comparing to other prominent techniques, our approaches demonstrate superior accuracy and are suitable for early classification of different types of human actions in time-sensitive mobile applications such as robotics.