# Single View Physical Distance Estimation using Human Pose

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2106.10335 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.10335/

## Key facts

- Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 28 of its 59 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 18 Jun 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 28 of 28)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Microsoft COCO: Common Objects in Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1405.0312/) (2014)
- [Faster R-CNN: Towards Real-Time Object Detection with Region Proposal Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.01497/) (2015)
- [Mask R-CNN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.06870/) (2017)
- [Feature Pyramid Networks for Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.03144/) (2016)
- [Fast R-CNN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1504.08083/) (2015)
- [Deep High-Resolution Representation Learning for Human Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.09212/) (2019)
- [OpenPose: Realtime Multi-Person 2D Pose Estimation using Part Affinity Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.08008/) (2018)
- [Realtime Multi-Person 2D Pose Estimation using Part Affinity Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.08050/) (2016)
- [Stacked Hourglass Networks for Human Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.06937/) (2016)
- [Unsupervised Monocular Depth Estimation with Left-Right Consistency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.03677/) (2016)
- [Simple Baselines for Human Pose Estimation and Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.06208/) (2018)
- [Unsupervised CNN for Single View Depth Estimation: Geometry to the Rescue](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.04992/) (2016)
- [DeepPose: Human Pose Estimation via Deep Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1312.4659/) (2013)
- [What Do Single-view 3D Reconstruction Networks Learn?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.03678/) (2019)
- [Integral Human Pose Regression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.08229/) (2017)
- [Coarse-to-Fine Volumetric Prediction for Single-Image 3D Human Pose](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.07828/) (2016)
- [Associative Embedding: End-to-End Learning for Joint Detection and Grouping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.05424/) (2016)
- [Single-Shot Multi-Person 3D Pose Estimation From Monocular RGB](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.03453/) (2017)
- [Multi-view Supervision for Single-view Reconstruction via Differentiable Ray Consistency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.06254/) (2017)
- [PoseTrack: A Benchmark for Human Pose Estimation and Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.10000/) (2017)
- [Depth from Videos in the Wild: Unsupervised Monocular Depth Learning from Unknown Cameras](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.04998/) (2019)
- [PersonLab: Person Pose Estimation and Instance Segmentation with a Bottom-Up, Part-Based, Geometric Embedding Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.08225/) (2018)
- [Camera Distance-aware Top-down Approach for 3D Multi-person Pose Estimation from a Single RGB Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.11346/) (2019)
- [Joint Training of a Convolutional Network and a Graphical Model for Human Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1406.2984/) (2014)
- [Unsupervised Learning of 3D Structure from Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1607.00662/) (2016)
- [MonoLoco: Monocular 3D Pedestrian Localization and Uncertainty Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.06059/) (2019)
- [Learning Human Pose Estimation Features with Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1312.7302/) (2013)

## Built on by (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [Crowd3D: Towards Hundreds of People Reconstruction from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.09376/) (2023)
- [Simultaneously Recovering Multi-Person Meshes and Multi-View Cameras with Human Semantics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.18785/) (2024)
- [Monocular Person Localization under Camera Ego-motion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.02916/) (2025)
- [Mirror-Aware Neural Humans](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.04750/) (2023)
- [CasCalib: Cascaded Calibration for Motion Capture from Sparse Unsynchronized Cameras](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.06845/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We propose a fully automated system that simultaneously estimates the camera intrinsics, the ground plane, and physical distances between people from a single RGB image or video captured by a camera viewing a 3-D scene from a fixed vantage point. To automate camera calibration and distance estimation, we leverage priors about human pose and develop a novel direct formulation for pose-based auto-calibration and distance estimation, which shows state-of-the-art performance on publicly available datasets. The proposed approach enables existing camera systems to measure physical distances without needing a dedicated calibration process or range sensors, and is applicable to a broad range of use cases such as social distancing and workplace safety. Furthermore, to enable evaluation and drive research in this area, we contribute to the publicly available MEVA dataset with additional distance annotations, resulting in MEVADA -- the first evaluation benchmark in the world for the pose-based auto-calibration and distance estimation problem.