Efficient spatio-temporal feature clustering for large event-based datasets

Abstract

Event-based cameras encode changes in a visual scene with high temporal precision and low power consumption, generating millions of events per second in the process. Current event-based processing algorithms do not scale well in terms of runtime and computational resources when applied to a large amount of data. This problem is further exacerbated by the development of high spatial resolution vision sensors. We introduce a fast and computationally efficient clustering algorithm that is particularly designed for dealing with large event-based datasets. The approach is based on the Expectation-Maximization (EM) algorithm and relies on a stochastic approximation of the E-step over a truncated space to reduce the computational burden and speed up the learning process. We evaluate the quality, complexity, and stability of the clustering algorithm on a variety of large event-based datasets, and then validate our approach with a classification task. The proposed algorithm is significantly faster than standard k-means and reduces computational demands by two to three orders of magnitude while being more stable, interpretable, and close to the state of the art in terms of classification accuracy.

Publication
Neuromorphic Computing and Engineering
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