TaskVAE: Task-Specific Variational Autoencoders for Exemplar Generation in Continual Learning for Human Activity Recognition

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Hauptverfasser: Kann, Bonpagna, Castellanos-Paez, Sandra, Rombourg, Romain, Lalanda, Philippe
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Kann, Bonpagna
Castellanos-Paez, Sandra
Rombourg, Romain
Lalanda, Philippe
author_facet Kann, Bonpagna
Castellanos-Paez, Sandra
Rombourg, Romain
Lalanda, Philippe
contents As machine learning based systems become more integrated into daily life, they unlock new opportunities but face the challenge of adapting to dynamic data environments. Various forms of data shift-gradual, abrupt, or cyclic-threaten model accuracy, making continual adaptation essential. Continual Learning (CL) enables models to learn from evolving data streams while minimizing forgetting of prior knowledge. Among CL strategies, replay-based methods have proven effective, but their success relies on balancing memory constraints and retaining old class accuracy while learning new classes. This paper presents TaskVAE, a framework for replay-based CL in class-incremental settings. TaskVAE employs task-specific Variational Autoencoders (VAEs) to generate synthetic exemplars from previous tasks, which are then used to train the classifier alongside new task data. In contrast to traditional methods that require prior knowledge of the total class count or rely on a single VAE for all tasks, TaskVAE adapts flexibly to increasing tasks without such constraints. We focus on Human Activity Recognition (HAR) using IMU sensor-equipped devices. Unlike previous HAR studies that combine data across all users, our approach focuses on individual user data, better reflecting real-world scenarios where a person progressively learns new activities. Extensive experiments on 5 different HAR datasets show that TaskVAE outperforms experience replay methods, particularly with limited data, and exhibits robust performance as dataset size increases. Additionally, memory footprint of TaskVAE is minimal, being equivalent to only 60 samples per task, while still being able to generate an unlimited number of synthetic samples. The contributions lie in balancing memory constraints, task-specific generation, and long-term stability, making it a reliable solution for real-world applications in domains like HAR.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_01965
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle TaskVAE: Task-Specific Variational Autoencoders for Exemplar Generation in Continual Learning for Human Activity Recognition
Kann, Bonpagna
Castellanos-Paez, Sandra
Rombourg, Romain
Lalanda, Philippe
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
As machine learning based systems become more integrated into daily life, they unlock new opportunities but face the challenge of adapting to dynamic data environments. Various forms of data shift-gradual, abrupt, or cyclic-threaten model accuracy, making continual adaptation essential. Continual Learning (CL) enables models to learn from evolving data streams while minimizing forgetting of prior knowledge. Among CL strategies, replay-based methods have proven effective, but their success relies on balancing memory constraints and retaining old class accuracy while learning new classes. This paper presents TaskVAE, a framework for replay-based CL in class-incremental settings. TaskVAE employs task-specific Variational Autoencoders (VAEs) to generate synthetic exemplars from previous tasks, which are then used to train the classifier alongside new task data. In contrast to traditional methods that require prior knowledge of the total class count or rely on a single VAE for all tasks, TaskVAE adapts flexibly to increasing tasks without such constraints. We focus on Human Activity Recognition (HAR) using IMU sensor-equipped devices. Unlike previous HAR studies that combine data across all users, our approach focuses on individual user data, better reflecting real-world scenarios where a person progressively learns new activities. Extensive experiments on 5 different HAR datasets show that TaskVAE outperforms experience replay methods, particularly with limited data, and exhibits robust performance as dataset size increases. Additionally, memory footprint of TaskVAE is minimal, being equivalent to only 60 samples per task, while still being able to generate an unlimited number of synthetic samples. The contributions lie in balancing memory constraints, task-specific generation, and long-term stability, making it a reliable solution for real-world applications in domains like HAR.
title TaskVAE: Task-Specific Variational Autoencoders for Exemplar Generation in Continual Learning for Human Activity Recognition
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.01965