Higher rank support tensor machines

This work addresses the two class classification problem within the tensor-based large margin classification paradigm. To this end, we formulate the higher rank Support Tensor Machines (STMs), in which the parameters defining the separating hyperplane form a tensor (tensorplane) that is constrained to be the sum of rank one tensors. The corresponding optimization problem is solved in an iterative manner utilizing the CANDECOMP/PARAFAC (CP) decomposition, where at each iteration the parameters corresponding to the projections along a single tensor mode are estimated by solving a typical Support Vector Machine (SVM)-type optimization problem. The efficiency of the proposed method is illustrated on the problems of gait and action recognition where we report results that improve, in some cases considerably, the state of the art.