Ismail Uysal

Mainak Kundu, Catherine Chen, Rifatul Islam et al.

Human activity recognition (HAR) has become a key component of intelligent systems for healthcare monitoring, assistive living, smart environments, and human-computer interaction. Although deep learning has substantially improved HAR performance on multivariate sensor data, the resulting models often remain opaque, limiting trust, reliability, and real-world deployment. Explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) has therefore emerged as a critical direction for making HAR systems more transparent and human-centered. This paper presents a comprehensive review of explainable HAR methods across wearable, ambient, physiological, and multimodal sensing settings. We introduce a unified perspective that separates conceptual dimensions of explainability from algorithmic explanation mechanisms, reducing ambiguities in prior surveys. Building on this distinction, we present a mechanism-centric taxonomy of XAI-HAR methods covering major explanation paradigms. The review examines how these methods address the temporal, multimodal, and semantic complexities of HAR, and summarize their interpretability objectives, explanation targets, and limitations. In addition, we discuss current evaluation practices, highlight key challenges in achieving reliable and deployable XAI-HAR, and outline directions toward trustworthy activity recognition systems that better support human understanding and decision-making.

Ozsel Kilinc, Ismail Uysal

In this paper, we propose a novel unsupervised clustering approach exploiting the hidden information that is indirectly introduced through a pseudo classification objective. Specifically, we randomly assign a pseudo parent-class label to each observation which is then modified by applying the domain specific transformation associated with the assigned label. Generated pseudo observation-label pairs are subsequently used to train a neural network with Auto-clustering Output Layer (ACOL) that introduces multiple softmax nodes for each pseudo parent-class. Due to the unsupervised objective based on Graph-based Activity Regularization (GAR) terms, softmax duplicates of each parent-class are specialized as the hidden information captured through the help of domain specific transformations is propagated during training. Ultimately we obtain a k-means friendly latent representation. Furthermore, we demonstrate how the chosen transformation type impacts performance and helps propagate the latent information that is useful in revealing unknown clusters. Our results show state-of-the-art performance for unsupervised clustering tasks on MNIST, SVHN and USPS datasets, with the highest accuracies reported to date in the literature.

Ozsel Kilinc, Ismail Uysal

In this paper, we propose a novel graph-based approach for semi-supervised learning problems, which considers an adaptive adjacency of the examples throughout the unsupervised portion of the training. Adjacency of the examples is inferred using the predictions of a neural network model which is first initialized by a supervised pretraining. These predictions are then updated according to a novel unsupervised objective which regularizes another adjacency, now linking the output nodes. Regularizing the adjacency of the output nodes, inferred from the predictions of the network, creates an easier optimization problem and ultimately provides that the predictions of the network turn into the optimal embedding. Ultimately, the proposed framework provides an effective and scalable graph-based solution which is natural to the operational mechanism of deep neural networks. Our results show comparable performance with state-of-the-art generative approaches for semi-supervised learning on an easier-to-train, low-cost framework.

Ozsel Kilinc, Ismail Uysal

We introduce a novel validation framework to measure the true robustness of learning models for real-world applications by creating source-inclusive and source-exclusive partitions in a dataset via clustering. We develop a robustness metric derived from source-aware lower and upper bounds of model accuracy even when data source labels are not readily available. We clearly demonstrate that even on a well-explored dataset like MNIST, challenging training scenarios can be constructed under the proposed assessment framework for two separate yet equally important applications: i) more rigorous learning model comparison and ii) dataset adequacy evaluation. In addition, our findings not only promise a more complete identification of trade-offs between model complexity, accuracy and robustness but can also help researchers optimize their efforts in data collection by identifying the less robust and more challenging class labels.

Ozsel Kilinc, Ismail Uysal

In this paper, we discuss a different type of semi-supervised setting: a coarse level of labeling is available for all observations but the model has to learn a fine level of latent annotation for each one of them. Problems in this setting are likely to be encountered in many domains such as text categorization, protein function prediction, image classification as well as in exploratory scientific studies such as medical and genomics research. We consider this setting as simultaneously performed supervised classification (per the available coarse labels) and unsupervised clustering (within each one of the coarse labels) and propose a novel output layer modification called auto-clustering output layer (ACOL) that allows concurrent classification and clustering based on Graph-based Activity Regularization (GAR) technique. As the proposed output layer modification duplicates the softmax nodes at the output layer for each class, GAR allows for competitive learning between these duplicates on a traditional error-correction learning framework to ultimately enable a neural network to learn the latent annotations in this partially supervised setup. We demonstrate how the coarse label supervision impacts performance and helps propagate useful clustering information between sub-classes. Comparative tests on three of the most popular image datasets MNIST, SVHN and CIFAR-100 rigorously demonstrate the effectiveness and competitiveness of the proposed approach.

A. Fatih Demir, Huseyin Arslan, Ismail Uysal

Brain-computer interfaces (BCI) have the potential to play a vital role in future healthcare technologies by providing an alternative way of communication and control. More specifically, steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP) based BCIs have the advantage of higher accuracy and higher information transfer rate (ITR). In order to fully exploit the capabilities of such devices, it is necessary to understand the features of SSVEP and design the system considering its biological characteristics. This paper introduces bio-inspired filter banks (BIFB) for a novel SSVEP frequency detection method. It is known that SSVEP response to a flickering visual stimulus is frequency selective and gets weaker as the frequency of the stimuli increases. In the proposed approach, the gain and bandwidth of the filters are designed and tuned based on these characteristics while also incorporating harmonic SSVEP responses. This method not only improves the accuracy but also increases the available number of commands by allowing the use of stimuli frequencies elicit weak SSVEP responses. The BIFB method achieved reliable performance when tested on datasets available online and compared with two well-known SSVEP frequency detection methods, power spectral density analysis (PSDA) and canonical correlation analysis (CCA). The results show the potential of bio-inspired design which will be extended to include further SSVEP characteristic (e.g. time-domain waveform) for future SSVEP based BCIs.