Modeling Interleaved Hidden Processes

Abstract

Hidden Markov models assume that observations in time series data stem from some hidden process that can be compactly represented as a Markov chain. We generalize this model by assuming that the observed data stems from multiple hidden processes, whose outputs interleave to form the sequence of observations. Exact inference in this model is NP-hard. However, a tractable and effective inference algorithm is obtained by extending structured approximate inference methods used in factorial hidden Markov models. The proposed model is evaluated in an activity recognition domain, where multiple activities interleave and together generate a stream of sensor observations. It is shown to be more accurate than a standard hidden Markov model in this domain.