What, where and who? Classifying events by scene and object recognition

We propose a first attempt to classify events in static images by integrating scene and object categorizations. We define an event in a static image as a human activity taking place in a specific environment. In this paper, we use a number of sport games such as snow boarding, rock climbing or badminton to demonstrate event classification. Our goal is to classify the event in the image as well as to provide a number of semantic labels to the objects and scene environment within the image. For example, given a rowing scene, our algorithm recognizes the event as rowing by classifying the environment as a lake and recognizing the critical objects in the image as athletes, rowing boat, water, etc. We achieve this integrative and holistic recognition through a generative graphical model. We have assembled a highly challenging database of 8 widely varied sport events. We show that our system is capable of classifying these event classes at 73.4% accuracy. While each component of the model contributes to the final recognition, using scene or objects alone cannot achieve this performance.