Spatial-temporal graph neural ODE networks for skeleton-based action recognition

Abstract In the field of skeleton-based action recognition, accurately recognizing human actions is crucial for applications such as virtual reality and motion analysis. However, this task faces challenges such intraindividual action differences and long-term temporal dependencies. To address these challenges, we propose an innovative model called spatial-temporal graph neural ordinary differential equations (STG-NODE). First, in the data preprocessing stage, the dynamic time warping (DTW) algorithm is used to normalize and calculate 3D skeleton data to facilitate the derivation of customized adjacency matrices for improving the influence of intraindividual action differences. Secondly, a custom ordinary differential equation (ODE) integrator is applied based on the initial conditions of the temporal features, producing a solution function that simulates the dynamic evolution trend of the events of interest. Finally, the outstanding ODE solver is used to numerically solve the time features based on the solution function to increase the influence of long-term dependencies on the recognition accuracy of the model and provide it with a more powerful temporal modeling ability. Through extensive experiments conducted on the NTU RGB+D 60 and Kinetics Skeleton 400 benchmark datasets, we demonstrate the superior performance of STG-NODE in the action recognition domain. The success of the STG-NODE model also provides new ideas and methods for the future development of the action recognition field.