Real-Time Short-Range Human Posture Estimation Using mmWave Radars and Neural Networks

Millimetre-wave (mmWave) radar is increasing in popularity for human activity recognition, due to its advantages of high resolution, non-intrusive nature and suitability for various environments. In this paper, we present a novel human posture estimation system using mmWave radars. The system detects people with arbitrary postures in indoor environments at close distances (within two metres), and estimates the posture by localising the key joints. We use two mmWave radars to capture the scene and a neural network model to estimate the posture. The neural network model consists of a part detector that estimates the subject’s joint positions, and a spatial model that learns the correlation between the joints. A temporal correlation step is introduced to further refine the estimate when in real-time operation. The system can provide an accurate posture estimate of the person in real-time at 20 fps, with a mean localisation error of 12.2 cm and an average precision of 71.3%.