Hierarchical Action Learning for Weakly-Supervised Action Segmentation

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Huang, Junxian, Cai, Ruichu, Zhu, Hao, Fang, Juntao, Xu, Boyan, Chen, Weilin, Li, Zijian, Gao, Shenghua
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866917299959627776
author Huang, Junxian
Cai, Ruichu
Zhu, Hao
Fang, Juntao
Xu, Boyan
Chen, Weilin
Li, Zijian
Gao, Shenghua
author_facet Huang, Junxian
Cai, Ruichu
Zhu, Hao
Fang, Juntao
Xu, Boyan
Chen, Weilin
Li, Zijian
Gao, Shenghua
contents Humans perceive actions through key transitions that structure actions across multiple abstraction levels, whereas machines, relying on visual features, tend to over-segment. This highlights the difficulty of enabling hierarchical reasoning in video understanding. Interestingly, we observe that lower-level visual and high-level action latent variables evolve at different rates, with low-level visual variables changing rapidly, while high-level action variables evolve more slowly, making them easier to identify. Building on this insight, we propose the Hierarchical Action Learning (\textbf{HAL}) model for weakly-supervised action segmentation. Our approach introduces a hierarchical causal data generation process, where high-level latent action governs the dynamics of low-level visual features. To model these varying timescales effectively, we introduce deterministic processes to align these latent variables over time. The \textbf{HAL} model employs a hierarchical pyramid transformer to capture both visual features and latent variables, and a sparse transition constraint is applied to enforce the slower dynamics of high-level action variables. This mechanism enhances the identification of these latent variables over time. Under mild assumptions, we prove that these latent action variables are strictly identifiable. Experimental results on several benchmarks show that the \textbf{HAL} model significantly outperforms existing methods for weakly-supervised action segmentation, confirming its practical effectiveness in real-world applications.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_24275
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Hierarchical Action Learning for Weakly-Supervised Action Segmentation
Huang, Junxian
Cai, Ruichu
Zhu, Hao
Fang, Juntao
Xu, Boyan
Chen, Weilin
Li, Zijian
Gao, Shenghua
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Humans perceive actions through key transitions that structure actions across multiple abstraction levels, whereas machines, relying on visual features, tend to over-segment. This highlights the difficulty of enabling hierarchical reasoning in video understanding. Interestingly, we observe that lower-level visual and high-level action latent variables evolve at different rates, with low-level visual variables changing rapidly, while high-level action variables evolve more slowly, making them easier to identify. Building on this insight, we propose the Hierarchical Action Learning (\textbf{HAL}) model for weakly-supervised action segmentation. Our approach introduces a hierarchical causal data generation process, where high-level latent action governs the dynamics of low-level visual features. To model these varying timescales effectively, we introduce deterministic processes to align these latent variables over time. The \textbf{HAL} model employs a hierarchical pyramid transformer to capture both visual features and latent variables, and a sparse transition constraint is applied to enforce the slower dynamics of high-level action variables. This mechanism enhances the identification of these latent variables over time. Under mild assumptions, we prove that these latent action variables are strictly identifiable. Experimental results on several benchmarks show that the \textbf{HAL} model significantly outperforms existing methods for weakly-supervised action segmentation, confirming its practical effectiveness in real-world applications.
title Hierarchical Action Learning for Weakly-Supervised Action Segmentation
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.24275