Temporal Data Classification by Imprecise Dynamical Models

We propose a new methodology to classify temporal data with imprecise hidden Markov models. For each sequence we learn a different model by coupling the EM algorithm with the imprecise Dirichlet model. As a model descriptor, we consider the expected value of the observable variable in the limit of stationarity of the Markov chain. In the imprecise case, only the bounds of this descriptor can be evaluated. In practice the sequence, which can be regarded as a trajectory in the feature space, is summarized by a hyperbox in the same space. We classify these static but interval-valued data by a credal generalization of the k-nearest neighbors algorithm. Experiments on benchmark datasets for computer vision show that the method achieves the required robustness whilst outperforming other precise and imprecise methods.