Digitization of human motion using skeleton representations offers exciting possibilities for a large number of applications but, at the same time, requires innovative techniques for their effective and efficient processing. Content-based processing of skeleton data has developed rapidly in recent years, focusing mainly on specialized prototypes with limited consideration of generic data management possibilities. In this survey article, we synthesize and categorize the existing approaches and outline future research challenges brought by the increasing availability of human motion data. In particular, we first discuss the problems of suitable representation and segmentation of continuous skeleton data obtained from various sources. Then, we concentrate on comparison models for assessing the similarity of time-restricted pieces of motions, as required by any content-based management operation. Next, we review the techniques for evaluating similarity queries over collections of motion sequences and filtering query-relevant parts from continuous motion streams. Finally, we summarize the usability of existing techniques in perspective application domains and discuss the new challenges related to current technological and infrastructural developments. We especially assess the existing techniques from the perspective of scalability and propose future research directions for dealing with large and diverse volumes of skeleton data.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.