cient Query Processing in 3 D Motion Capture Gesture Databases via the Gesture Matching Distance

One of the most fundamental challenges when accessing gestural patterns in 3D motion capture databases is the definition of spatiotemporal similarity. While distance-based similarity models such as the Gesture Matching Distance on gesture signatures are able to leverage the spatial and temporal characteristics of gestural patterns, their applicability to large 3D motion capture databases is limited due to their high computational complexity. To this end, we present a lower bound approximation of the Gesture Matching Distance that can be utilized in an optimal multi-step query processing architecture in order to support e cient query processing. We investigate the performance in terms of accuracy and e ciency based on 3D motion capture databases and show that our approach is able to achieve an increase in e ciency of more than one order of magnitude with a negligible loss in accuracy. In addition, we discuss di↵erent applications in the digital humanities in order to highlight the significance of similarity search approaches in the research field of gestural pattern analysis.