US Patent 8135209 Articulated object position and posture estimation device, method and program

An object is to provide an articulated object position and posture estimation device with reduced calculation cost of model fitting for estimating position and posture and with improved estimation speed. A posture model storage section 2 stores data concerning to a posture model with low-dimensional parameters under movement restraint. The low-dimensional parameters are obtained by performing a principal component analysis on time-series postures of an articulated object frame model corresponding to a predetermined limited movement of an articulated object such as human body. A human body position and posture estimation device 101 generates a image of each posture of the articulated object frame model within postures which can be taken by the posture model in a human body model image generating section 4, performs a matching with an estimation target articulated object image in a position and posture estimation section 10, and thus, estimates a posture.