A Confidence-Based Multibody Kinematics Optimization for Markerless Motion Capture: A Proof of Concept

Multi-camera markerless motion capture commonly triangulates 3D points from 2D keypoint positions in multiple camera views, then applies a multibody kinematics optimization (MKO) to incorporate biomechanical constraints. However, standard pipelines neglect the 2D confidence heatmaps generated by human pose estimation networks. We hypothesized that performing MKO in 2D camera planes would make it more robust to missing keypoints and allow us to obtain better accuracy. 2D confidence heatmaps were used to maximize available information. To test this, we first model each network-derived heatmap as a 2D Gaussian function characterized by its center, amplitude, and standard deviation. Second, we maximize the sum of these modeled confidences after projecting the biomechanical model into the camera planes. To demonstrate feasibility, we evaluated our method on data from two participants performing sit-to-stand, walking, and manual material handling, captured by a two-camera setup, and simultaneously collected marker-based data. Our Gaussian modeling of the heatmaps demonstrated a mean absolute difference of 0.011 compared to the original discrete maps, confirming its validity. In terms of 3D joint positions and angles, the confidence-based MKO produced results similar to classical distance-based methods. Notably, the confidence-based approach overcame occultations: 89.3% of frames could only be obtained with the distance-based MKO due to missing keypoints, while the confidence-based MKO computed 100% of frames. These findings underscore the potential of using full 2D confidence heatmaps in markerless motion capture, especially under challenging conditions such as sparse camera setups.