PromptTSS: A Prompting-Based Approach for Interactive Multi-Granularity Time Series Segmentation

TL;DR

PromptTSS introduces a unified prompting-based framework for multi-granularity time series segmentation, effectively capturing hierarchical states and adapting to evolving patterns, significantly improving segmentation accuracy and transfer learning performance.

Contribution

The paper presents PromptTSS, a novel prompting-based approach that handles multi-granularity segmentation within a single model and enhances adaptability to dynamic, unseen patterns.

Findings

24.49% accuracy improvement in multi-granularity segmentation

17.88% accuracy improvement in single-granularity segmentation

up to 599.24% improvement in transfer learning

Abstract

Multivariate time series data, collected across various fields such as manufacturing and wearable technology, exhibit states at multiple levels of granularity, from coarse-grained system behaviors to fine-grained, detailed events. Effectively segmenting and integrating states across these different granularities is crucial for tasks like predictive maintenance and performance optimization. However, existing time series segmentation methods face two key challenges: (1) the inability to handle multiple levels of granularity within a unified model, and (2) limited adaptability to new, evolving patterns in dynamic environments. To address these challenges, we propose PromptTSS, a novel framework for time series segmentation with multi-granularity states. PromptTSS uses a unified model with a prompting mechanism that leverages label and boundary information to guide segmentation, capturing both coarse- and fine-grained patterns while adapting dynamically to unseen patterns. Experiments show PromptTSS improves accuracy by 24.49% in multi-granularity segmentation, 17.88% in single-granularity segmentation, and up to 599.24% in transfer learning, demonstrating its adaptability to hierarchical states and evolving time series dynamics. Our code is available at https://github.com/blacksnail789521/PromptTSS.