# LiDARCap: Long-range Marker-less 3D Human Motion Capture with LiDAR Point Clouds

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2203.14698 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.14698/

## Key facts

- Cited by 33 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 41 of its 71 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 28 Mar 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 41)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [PointNet++: Deep Hierarchical Feature Learning on Point Sets in a Metric Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.02413/) (2017)
- [Quo Vadis, Action Recognition? A New Model and the Kinetics Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.07750/) (2017)
- [Scalability in Perception for Autonomous Driving: Waymo Open Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.04838/) (2019)
- [PointPillars: Fast Encoders for Object Detection from Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.05784/) (2018)
- [VoxelNet: End-to-End Learning for Point Cloud Based 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.06396/) (2017)
- [AMASS: Archive of Motion Capture as Surface Shapes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.03278/) (2019)
- [On the Continuity of Rotation Representations in Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.07035/) (2018)
- [Spatial Temporal Graph Convolutional Networks for Skeleton-Based Action Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.07455/) (2018)
- [4D Spatio-Temporal ConvNets: Minkowski Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.08755/) (2019)
- [KPConv: Flexible and Deformable Convolution for Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.08889/) (2019)
- [Realtime Multi-Person 2D Pose Estimation using Part Affinity Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.08050/) (2016)
- [PointRCNN: 3D Object Proposal Generation and Detection from Point Cloud](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.04244/) (2018)
- [End-to-end Recovery of Human Shape and Pose](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.06584/) (2017)
- [Keep it SMPL: Automatic Estimation of 3D Human Pose and Shape from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1607.08128/) (2016)
- [Learning to Reconstruct 3D Human Pose and Shape via Model-fitting in the Loop](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.12828/) (2019)
- [VIBE: Video Inference for Human Body Pose and Shape Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.05656/) (2019)
- [RandLA-Net: Efficient Semantic Segmentation of Large-Scale Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.11236/) (2019)
- [Monocular 3D Human Pose Estimation In The Wild Using Improved CNN Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.09813/) (2016)
- [Learning from Synthetic Humans](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1701.01370/) (2017)
- [Learning 3D Human Dynamics from Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.01601/) (2018)
- [Total Capture: A 3D Deformation Model for Tracking Faces, Hands, and Bodies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.01615/) (2018)
- [Spatio-temporal Self-Supervised Representation Learning for 3D Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.00179/) (2021)
- [PoseTrack: A Benchmark for Human Pose Estimation and Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.10000/) (2017)
- [DeepCap: Monocular Human Performance Capture Using Weak Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.08325/) (2020)
- [TailorNet: Predicting Clothing in 3D as a Function of Human Pose, Shape and Garment Style](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.04583/) (2020)
- [VNect: Real-time 3D Human Pose Estimation with a Single RGB Camera](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.01583/) (2017)
- [We are More than Our Joints: Predicting how 3D Bodies Move](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.00619/) (2020)
- [Monocular Real-Time Volumetric Performance Capture](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.13988/) (2020)
- [EventCap: Monocular 3D Capture of High-Speed Human Motions using an Event Camera](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.11505/) (2019)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 33)

- [MM-Fi: Multi-Modal Non-Intrusive 4D Human Dataset for Versatile Wireless Sensing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.10345/) (2023)
- [SLOPER4D: A Scene-Aware Dataset for Global 4D Human Pose Estimation in Urban Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.09095/) (2023)
- [LiDAR-aid Inertial Poser: Large-scale Human Motion Capture by Sparse Inertial and LiDAR Sensors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.15410/) (2022)
- [CIMI4D: A Large Multimodal Climbing Motion Dataset under Human-scene Interactions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.17948/) (2023)
- [Weakly Supervised 3D Multi-person Pose Estimation for Large-scale Scenes based on Monocular Camera and Single LiDAR](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.16951/) (2022)
- [NICP: Neural ICP for 3D Human Registration at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.14024/) (2023)
- [Human-centric Scene Understanding for 3D Large-scale Scenarios](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.14392/) (2023)
- [RELI11D: A Comprehensive Multimodal Human Motion Dataset and Method](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.19501/) (2024)
- [X-Fi: A Modality-Invariant Foundation Model for Multimodal Human Sensing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.10167/) (2024)
- [LiDAR-HMR: 3D Human Mesh Recovery from LiDAR](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.11971/) (2023)
- [Human-M3: A Multi-view Multi-modal Dataset for 3D Human Pose Estimation in Outdoor Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.00628/) (2023)
- [3D Human Keypoints Estimation From Point Clouds in the Wild Without Human Labels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.04745/) (2023)
- [PointHPS: Cascaded 3D Human Pose and Shape Estimation from Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.14492/) (2023)
- [CanFields: Consolidating Diffeomorphic Flows for Non-Rigid 4D Interpolation from Arbitrary-Length Sequences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.18582/) (2024)
- [MOVIN: Real-time Motion Capture using a Single LiDAR](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.09314/) (2023)
- [LiveHPS++: Robust and Coherent Motion Capture in Dynamic Free Environment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.09833/) (2024)
- [HiSC4D: Human-centered interaction and 4D Scene Capture in Large-scale Space Using Wearable IMUs and LiDAR](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.04398/) (2024)
- [Towards Motion Turing Test: Evaluating Human-Likeness in Humanoid Robots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.06181/) (2026)
- [HUNTER: Unsupervised Human-centric 3D Detection via Transferring Knowledge from Synthetic Instances to Real Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.02769/) (2024)
- [Sports Analysis and VR Viewing System Based on Player Tracking and Pose Estimation with Multimodal and Multiview Sensors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.01112/) (2024)
- [Towards Practical Human Motion Prediction with LiDAR Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.08202/) (2024)
- [ReMP: Reusable Motion Prior for Multi-domain 3D Human Pose Estimation and Motion Inbetweening](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.09435/) (2024)
- [EVOPOSE: A Recursive Transformer For 3D Human Pose Estimation With Kinematic Structure Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.09615/) (2023)
- [HoloLLM: Multisensory Foundation Model for Language-Grounded Human Sensing and Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.17645/) (2025)
- [DeSPITE: Exploring Contrastive Deep Skeleton-Pointcloud-IMU-Text Embeddings for Advanced Point Cloud Human Activity Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.13897/) (2025)
- [VST-Pose: A Velocity-Integrated Spatiotem-poral Attention Network for Human WiFi Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.09672/) (2025)
- [HorGait: A Hybrid Model for Accurate Gait Recognition in LiDAR Point Cloud Planar Projections](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.08454/) (2024)
- [Dynamic-Dark SLAM: RGB-Thermal Cooperative Robot Vision Strategy for Multi-Person Tracking in Both Well-Lit and Low-Light Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.12768/) (2025)
- [SkeFi: Cross-Modal Knowledge Transfer for Wireless Skeleton-Based Action Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.12432/) (2026)
- [Sparkle: A Robust and Versatile Representation for Point Cloud based Human Motion Capture](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.00857/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Existing motion capture datasets are largely short-range and cannot yet fit the need of long-range applications. We propose LiDARHuman26M, a new human motion capture dataset captured by LiDAR at a much longer range to overcome this limitation. Our dataset also includes the ground truth human motions acquired by the IMU system and the synchronous RGB images. We further present a strong baseline method, LiDARCap, for LiDAR point cloud human motion capture. Specifically, we first utilize PointNet++ to encode features of points and then employ the inverse kinematics solver and SMPL optimizer to regress the pose through aggregating the temporally encoded features hierarchically. Quantitative and qualitative experiments show that our method outperforms the techniques based only on RGB images. Ablation experiments demonstrate that our dataset is challenging and worthy of further research. Finally, the experiments on the KITTI Dataset and the Waymo Open Dataset show that our method can be generalized to different LiDAR sensor settings.