# KGS-GCN: Kinematics-Driven Gaussian Splatting and Probabilistic Topology for Skeleton-Based Action Recognition

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.16943 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.16943/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 32 of its 44 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 16 Mar 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 32)

- [3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04079/) (2023)
- [Implicit Neural Representations with Periodic Activation Functions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.09661/) (2020)
- [Spatial Temporal Graph Convolutional Networks for Skeleton-Based Action Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.07455/) (2018)
- [2D Gaussian Splatting for Geometrically Accurate Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17888/) (2024)
- [NTU RGB+D: A Large Scale Dataset for 3D Human Activity Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1604.02808/) (2016)
- [DrivingGaussian: Composite Gaussian Splatting for Surrounding Dynamic Autonomous Driving Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.07920/) (2023)
- [Disentangling and Unifying Graph Convolutions for Skeleton-Based Action Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.14111/) (2020)
- [Channel-wise Topology Refinement Graph Convolution for Skeleton-Based Action Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.12213/) (2021)
- [Actional-Structural Graph Convolutional Networks for Skeleton-based Action Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.12659/) (2019)
- [Human Action Recognition and Prediction: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.11230/) (2018)
- [Street Gaussians: Modeling Dynamic Urban Scenes with Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.01339/) (2024)
- [GaussianPro: 3D Gaussian Splatting with Progressive Propagation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.14650/) (2024)
- [CityGaussian: Real-time High-quality Large-Scale Scene Rendering with Gaussians](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.01133/) (2024)
- [Cross-view Action Modeling, Learning and Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1405.2941/) (2014)
- [Skeleton-Based Action Recognition with Multi-Stream Adaptive Graph Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.06971/) (2019)
- [GaussianImage: 1000 FPS Image Representation and Compression by 2D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.08551/) (2024)
- [Skeleton-based Action Recognition via Spatial and Temporal Transformer Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.07404/) (2020)
- [Speedy-Splat: Fast 3D Gaussian Splatting with Sparse Pixels and Sparse Primitives](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.00578/) (2024)
- [Constructing Stronger and Faster Baselines for Skeleton-based Action Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.15125/) (2021)
- [MVSGaussian: Fast Generalizable Gaussian Splatting Reconstruction from Multi-View Stereo](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.12218/) (2024)
- [Hierarchically Decomposed Graph Convolutional Networks for Skeleton-Based Action Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.10741/) (2022)
- [Learning Graph Convolutional Network for Skeleton-based Human Action Recognition by Neural Searching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.04131/) (2019)
- [Learning Discriminative Representations for Skeleton Based Action Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.03729/) (2023)
- [SkateFormer: Skeletal-Temporal Transformer for Human Action Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.09508/) (2024)
- [Hypergraph Transformer for Skeleton-based Action Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.09590/) (2022)
- [Momentum-GS: Momentum Gaussian Self-Distillation for High-Quality Large Scene Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.04887/) (2024)
- [Large Images are Gaussians: High-Quality Large Image Representation with Levels of 2D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.09039/) (2025)
- [Instant GaussianImage: A Generalizable and Self-Adaptive Image Representation via 2D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.23479/) (2025)
- [Frequency Guidance Matters: Skeletal Action Recognition by Frequency-Aware Mixed Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.12322/) (2024)
- [Overcoming Topology Agnosticism: Enhancing Skeleton-Based Action Recognition through Redefined Skeletal Topology Awareness](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.11468/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Gaussian Light Field Splatting: A Physical Prior-Driven Vision Transformer for Unsupervised Low-Light Image Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.17985/) (2026)
- [AIGS-Net: Compact Illumination Field Modeling via 2D Gaussian Splatting for Fast Low-Light Image Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.17998/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Skeleton-based action recognition is widely applied in sensor-based systems, including human-computer interaction and intelligent surveillance. However, typical sensors produce sparse and discrete joint coordinates, often leading to the loss of fine-grained spatiotemporal information during dynamic movements. Furthermore, predefined physical topologies restrict modeling potential long-range dependencies. To address these challenges, we propose KGS-GCN, which integrates kinematics-driven Gaussian splatting and probabilistic topology within a graph convolutional network. A Gaussian splatting module constructs anisotropic covariance matrices by extracting instantaneous joint velocity vectors, rendering sparse skeleton sequences into multi-view continuous heatmaps rich in spatiotemporal semantics. Additionally, a probabilistic topology construction strategy transcends physical connectivity limitations by utilizing the Bhattacharyya distance to quantify statistical correlations between joint Gaussian distributions, generating an adaptive prior adjacency matrix. Finally, the lightweight multi-view rendering branch and topological GCN backbone are unified through a visual context gating mechanism, enabling seamless fusion of continuous dynamic cues with structural priors while maintaining high computational efficiency, requiring only 1.4M parameters and 1.3 GFLOPs. Extensive experiments on multiple benchmark datasets demonstrate that KGS-GCN significantly enhances the modeling of complex spatiotemporal dynamics and achieves competitive performance at low computational cost, establishing an efficient paradigm for improving the perceptual robustness of low-fidelity sensor data.