# Towards Balanced Multi-Modal Learning in 3D Human Pose Estimation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.05264 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.05264/

## Key facts

- Cited by 12 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 38 of its 64 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 9 Jan 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 38)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Point Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.00931/) (2020)
- [3D human pose estimation in video with temporal convolutions and semi-supervised training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.11742/) (2018)
- [What Makes Training Multi-Modal Classification Networks Hard?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.12681/) (2019)
- [Balanced Multimodal Learning via On-the-fly Gradient Modulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.15332/) (2022)
- [Coarse-to-Fine Volumetric Prediction for Single-Image 3D Human Pose](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.07828/) (2016)
- [Camera Distance-aware Top-down Approach for 3D Multi-person Pose Estimation from a Single RGB Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.11346/) (2019)
- [PMR: Prototypical Modal Rebalance for Multimodal Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.07089/) (2022)
- [Characterizing and overcoming the greedy nature of learning in multi-modal deep neural networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.05306/) (2022)
- [Probabilistic Monocular 3D Human Pose Estimation with Normalizing Flows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.13788/) (2021)
- [MM-Fi: Multi-Modal Non-Intrusive 4D Human Dataset for Versatile Wireless Sensing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.10345/) (2023)
- [Attentive Relational Networks for Mapping Images to Scene Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.10696/) (2018)
- [Boosting Multi-modal Model Performance with Adaptive Gradient Modulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.07686/) (2023)
- [MMPareto: Boosting Multimodal Learning with Innocent Unimodal Assistance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.17730/) (2024)
- [ReconBoost: Boosting Can Achieve Modality Reconcilement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.09321/) (2024)
- [Enhancing multimodal cooperation via sample-level modality valuation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.06255/) (2023)
- [Diagnosing and Re-learning for Balanced Multimodal Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.09705/) (2024)
- [Multi-modal 3D Human Pose Estimation with 2D Weak Supervision in Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.12141/) (2021)
- [STCrowd: A Multimodal Dataset for Pedestrian Perception in Crowded Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.01026/) (2022)
- [Classifier-guided Gradient Modulation for Enhanced Multimodal Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.01409/) (2024)
- [T2SG: Traffic Topology Scene Graph for Topology Reasoning in Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.18894/) (2024)
- [KTPFormer: Kinematics and Trajectory Prior Knowledge-Enhanced Transformer for 3D Human Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.00658/) (2024)
- [3D Human Pose Estimation in RGBD Images for Robotic Task Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.02622/) (2018)
- [SGFormer: Semantic Graph Transformer for Point Cloud-based 3D Scene Graph Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11048/) (2023)
- [Direct Prediction of 3D Body Poses from Motion Compensated Sequences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.06692/) (2015)
- [FinePOSE: Fine-Grained Prompt-Driven 3D Human Pose Estimation via Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.05216/) (2024)
- [ImmFusion: Robust mmWave-RGB Fusion for 3D Human Body Reconstruction in All Weather Conditions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.01346/) (2022)
- [Action Quality Assessment via Hierarchical Pose-guided Multi-stage Contrastive Regression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.03674/) (2025)
- [Fast and Scalable Human Pose Estimation using mmWave Point Cloud](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.00097/) (2022)
- [HPERL: 3D Human Pose Estimation from RGB and LiDAR](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.08221/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 12 of 12)

- [Closing the Reality Gap: Zero-Shot Sim-to-Real Deployment for Dexterous Force-Based Grasping and Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.02778/) (2026)
- [CritiqueDriveVLM: From Verifier-Guided Reinforcement Learning to Latent Thought Distillation for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.04179/) (2026)
- [Chain-of-Evidence Multimodal Reasoning for Few-shot Temporal Action Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.13460/) (2025)
- [Reason-Then-Retrieve for CoVR-R with Structured Edit Prompts and Dense-Sparse Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.02450/) (2026)
- [A VideoMAE-v2 Approach to Zero-Shot Traffic Accident Anticipation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.09542/) (2026)
- [Multi-Modal Scene Graph with Kolmogorov-Arnold Experts for Audio-Visual Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.23304/) (2025)
- [Question-Aware Evidence Ledgers for Video Relational Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.02506/) (2026)
- [Claude Code-Driving Scenario Mining for the Argoverse 2 Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.09180/) (2026)
- [Leveraging Metric Depth for Relative Depth Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.10628/) (2026)
- [A DVDrive Approach for doScenes Instructed Driving Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.21623/) (2026)
- [Boosting Robustness for All-Weather Self-Supervised Depth Estimation in Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.21526/) (2026)
- [Kinematics-Induced Multimodal 3D Human Pose Estimation with Subject-Level Privacy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.02943/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

3D human pose estimation (3D HPE) has emerged as a prominent research topic, particularly in the realm of RGB-based methods. However, the use of RGB images is often limited by issues such as occlusion and privacy constraints. Consequently, multi-modal sensing, which leverages non-intrusive sensors, is gaining increasing attention. Nevertheless, multi-modal 3D HPE still faces challenges, including modality imbalance. In this work, we introduce a novel balanced multi-modal learning method for 3D HPE, which harnesses the power of RGB, LiDAR, mmWave, and WiFi. Specifically, we propose a Shapley value-based contribution algorithm to assess the contribution of each modality and detect modality imbalance. To address this imbalance, we design a modality learning regulation strategy that decelerates the learning process during the early stages of training. We conduct extensive experiments on the widely adopted multi-modal dataset, MM-Fi, demonstrating the superiority of our approach in enhancing 3D pose estimation under complex conditions. Our source code is available at https://github.com/MICLAB-BUPT/AWC.
