# EMDB: The Electromagnetic Database of Global 3D Human Pose and Shape in the Wild

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.16894 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.16894/

## Key facts

- Cited by 97 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 54 of its 86 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 31 Aug 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 54)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01703/) (2019)
- [Expressive Body Capture: 3D Hands, Face, and Body from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.05866/) (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)
- [End-to-end Recovery of Human Shape and Pose](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.06584/) (2017)
- [NeRF++: Analyzing and Improving Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.07492/) (2020)
- [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)
- [Monocular 3D Human Pose Estimation In The Wild Using Improved CNN Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.09813/) (2016)
- [A simple yet effective baseline for 3d human pose estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.03098/) (2017)
- [Learning from Synthetic Humans](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1701.01370/) (2017)
- [PARE: Part Attention Regressor for 3D Human Body Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.08527/) (2021)
- [Convolutional Pose Machines](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.00134/) (2016)
- [HybrIK: A Hybrid Analytical-Neural Inverse Kinematics Solution for 3D Human Pose and Shape Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.14672/) (2020)
- [Resolving 3D Human Pose Ambiguities with 3D Scene Constraints](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.06963/) (2019)
- [Mesh Graphormer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.00272/) (2021)
- [Integral Human Pose Regression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.08229/) (2017)
- [PyMAF: 3D Human Pose and Shape Regression with Pyramidal Mesh Alignment Feedback Loop](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.16507/) (2021)
- [BEHAVE: Dataset and Method for Tracking Human Object Interactions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.06950/) (2022)
- [CLIFF: Carrying Location Information in Full Frames into Human Pose and Shape Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.00571/) (2022)
- [A General and Adaptive Robust Loss Function](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1701.03077/) (2017)
- [Hand Keypoint Detection in Single Images using Multiview Bootstrapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.07809/) (2017)
- [Monocular, One-stage, Regression of Multiple 3D People](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.12272/) (2020)
- [AGORA: Avatars in Geography Optimized for Regression Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.14643/) (2021)
- [Neural Body Fitting: Unifying Deep Learning and Model-Based Human Pose and Shape Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.05942/) (2018)
- [DeepHuman: 3D Human Reconstruction from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.06473/) (2019)
- [Capturing and Inferring Dense Full-Body Human-Scene Contact](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.09553/) (2022)
- [Tex2Shape: Detailed Full Human Body Geometry From a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.08645/) (2019)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 97)

- [WHAM: Reconstructing World-grounded Humans with Accurate 3D Motion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.07531/) (2023)
- [World-Grounded Human Motion Recovery via Gravity-View Coordinates](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.06662/) (2024)
- [Nymeria: A Massive Collection of Multimodal Egocentric Daily Motion in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.09905/) (2024)
- [TRAM: Global Trajectory and Motion of 3D Humans from in-the-wild Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17346/) (2024)
- [TokenHMR: Advancing Human Mesh Recovery with a Tokenized Pose Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.16752/) (2024)
- [PromptHMR: Promptable Human Mesh Recovery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.06397/) (2025)
- [HaWoR: World-Space Hand Motion Reconstruction from Egocentric Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.02973/) (2025)
- [CameraHMR: Aligning People with Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.08128/) (2024)
- [Neural Localizer Fields for Continuous 3D Human Pose and Shape Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.07532/) (2024)
- [ParaHome: Parameterizing Everyday Home Activities Towards 3D Generative Modeling of Human-Object Interactions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.10232/) (2024)
- [GENMO: A GENeralist Model for Human MOtion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.01425/) (2025)
- [Score-Guided Diffusion for 3D Human Recovery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.09623/) (2024)
- [Human3R: Everyone Everywhere All at Once](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.06219/) (2025)
- [SMPLest-X: Ultimate Scaling for Expressive Human Pose and Shape Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.09782/) (2025)
- [WHAC: World-grounded Humans and Cameras](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.12959/) (2024)
- [Joint Optimization for 4D Human-Scene Reconstruction in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.02158/) (2025)
- [BEDLAM2.0: Synthetic Humans and Cameras in Motion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.14394/) (2025)
- [The Quest for Generalizable Motion Generation: Data, Model, and Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.26794/) (2025)
- [MMVP: A Multimodal MoCap Dataset with Vision and Pressure Sensors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17610/) (2024)
- [Synergistic Global-space Camera and Human Reconstruction from Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.14855/) (2024)
- [RELI11D: A Comprehensive Multimodal Human Motion Dataset and Method](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.19501/) (2024)
- [BioPose: Biomechanically-accurate 3D Pose Estimation from Monocular Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.07800/) (2025)
- [COIN: Control-Inpainting Diffusion Prior for Human and Camera Motion Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.16426/) (2024)
- [MEGA: Masked Generative Autoencoder for Human Mesh Recovery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.18839/) (2024)
- [WorldPose: A World Cup Dataset for Global 3D Human Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.02771/) (2025)
- [Video Generation Models are General-Purpose Vision Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.09024/) (2026)
- [VQ-HPS: Human Pose and Shape Estimation in a Vector-Quantized Latent Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.08291/) (2023)
- [Diffusion Models in 3D Vision: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.04738/) (2024)
- [Human Mesh Modeling for Anny Body](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.03589/) (2025)
- [EgoHDM: An Online Egocentric-Inertial Human Motion Capture, Localization, and Dense Mapping System](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.00343/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We present EMDB, the Electromagnetic Database of Global 3D Human Pose and Shape in the Wild. EMDB is a novel dataset that contains high-quality 3D SMPL pose and shape parameters with global body and camera trajectories for in-the-wild videos. We use body-worn, wireless electromagnetic (EM) sensors and a hand-held iPhone to record a total of 58 minutes of motion data, distributed over 81 indoor and outdoor sequences and 10 participants. Together with accurate body poses and shapes, we also provide global camera poses and body root trajectories. To construct EMDB, we propose a multi-stage optimization procedure, which first fits SMPL to the 6-DoF EM measurements and then refines the poses via image observations. To achieve high-quality results, we leverage a neural implicit avatar model to reconstruct detailed human surface geometry and appearance, which allows for improved alignment and smoothness via a dense pixel-level objective. Our evaluations, conducted with a multi-view volumetric capture system, indicate that EMDB has an expected accuracy of 2.3 cm positional and 10.6 degrees angular error, surpassing the accuracy of previous in-the-wild datasets. We evaluate existing state-of-the-art monocular RGB methods for camera-relative and global pose estimation on EMDB. EMDB is publicly available under https://ait.ethz.ch/emdb