HuTrain: a Framework for Fast Creation of Real Human Pose Datasets

Abstract

Image-based body tracking algorithms are useful in several scenarios, such as avatar animations and gesture interaction for VR applications. In the last few years, the best-ranked solutions presented on the state of the art of body tracking (according to the most popular datasets in the field) are intensively based on Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) algorithms and use large datasets for training and validation. Although these solutions achieve high precision scores while evaluated with some of these datasets, there are particular tracking challenges (for example, upside-down cases) that are not well-modeled and, therefore, not correctly tracked. Instead of lurking an all-in-one solution for all cases, we propose HuTrain, a framework for creating datasets quickly and easily. HuTrain comprises a series of steps, including automatic camera calibration, refined human pose estimation, and known dataset formats conversion. We show that, with our system, the user can generate human pose datasets, targeting specific tracking challenges for the desired application context, with no need to annotate human pose instances manually.