Context aware model for articulated human pose estimation

Simple tree model prevails for 2D pose estimation for its simplicity and efficiency. However, the limited kinetic constraints often lead to double-counting and damage the accuracy of leaf parts, and this is largely ignored in previous work. In this paper, we propose a novel enhanced tree model which incorporates both local kinetic constraints and global contextual constraints among non-adjacent parts. By introducing virtual parts, we are able to model richer constraints within a tree structure and dynamic programming can be utilized for efficient inference. Experiments on public benchmarks show that our method is more effective in tackling double counting problem and can improve the localization accuracy, especially for the challenging lower limbs.