LiDAR Technology for Human Activity Recognition: Outlooks and Challenges

The smart and autonomous learning and recognition of human activities will certainly lead to an incredible progression for several applications and services in public healthcare, education, entertainment, safety and security, and more. With the recent advances in artificial intelligence, signal processing, and computational capabilities, light detection and ranging (LiDAR) technology can play an instrumental role to revamp current human activity recognition (HAR) systems. In this magazine, we investigate the potential of using LiDAR sensors as a novel technology enabling complex and real-time HAR applications. We first overview the HAR categories and the existing state-of-the-art technologies: video-based cameras, depth sensors, wearable devices, and WiFi. Afterward, we delve into the integration of LiDAR technology to perform HAR applications. Then, we discuss the advantages and drawbacks of utilizing LiDAR technology for HAR and compare it with the existing techniques. Finally, we discuss the challenges that need to be addressed to enable advanced LiDAR-based HAR applications.