# CalTennis: Large Multi-View Tennis Video Dataset and Benchmark of Monocular-to-3D Pose Estimation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.20542 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.20542/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 30 of its 50 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 18 Jun 2026.

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

- [You Only Look Once: Unified, Real-Time Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.02640/) (2015)
- [Expressive Body Capture: 3D Hands, Face, and Body from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.05866/) (2019)
- [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)
- [AI Choreographer: Music Conditioned 3D Dance Generation with AIST++](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.08779/) (2021)
- [ViTPose: Simple Vision Transformer Baselines for Human Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.12484/) (2022)
- [PARE: Part Attention Regressor for 3D Human Body Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.08527/) (2021)
- [FineGym: A Hierarchical Video Dataset for Fine-grained Action Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.06704/) (2020)
- [OmniH2O: Universal and Dexterous Human-to-Humanoid Whole-Body Teleoperation and Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.08858/) (2024)
- [Capturing and Inferring Dense Full-Body Human-Scene Contact](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.09553/) (2022)
- [Deep Appearance Models for Face Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.00362/) (2018)
- [Beyond Static Features for Temporally Consistent 3D Human Pose and Shape from a Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.08627/) (2020)
- [SoccerNet: A Scalable Dataset for Action Spotting in Soccer Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.04527/) (2018)
- [Decoupling Human and Camera Motion from Videos in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.12827/) (2023)
- [World-Grounded Human Motion Recovery via Gravity-View Coordinates](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.06662/) (2024)
- [Coherent Reconstruction of Multiple Humans from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.08586/) (2020)
- [SportsMOT: A Large Multi-Object Tracking Dataset in Multiple Sports Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.05170/) (2023)
- [Multi-HMR: Multi-Person Whole-Body Human Mesh Recovery in a Single Shot](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.14654/) (2024)
- [EMDB: The Electromagnetic Database of Global 3D Human Pose and Shape in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.16894/) (2023)
- [Hi4D: 4D Instance Segmentation of Close Human Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.15380/) (2023)
- [Autonomous Vehicles that Interact with Pedestrians: A Survey of Theory and Practice](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.11773/) (2018)
- [Deep Gait Recognition: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.09546/) (2021)
- [MEVA: A Large-Scale Multiview, Multimodal Video Dataset for Activity Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.00914/) (2020)
- [SportsPose -- A Dynamic 3D sports pose dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.01865/) (2023)
- [COIN: Control-Inpainting Diffusion Prior for Human and Camera Motion Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.16426/) (2024)
- [WorldPose: A World Cup Dataset for Global 3D Human Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.02771/) (2025)
- [AthletePose3D: A Benchmark Dataset for 3D Human Pose Estimation and Kinematic Validation in Athletic Movements](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.07499/) (2025)
- [CLiFF-LHMP: Using Spatial Dynamics Patterns for Long-Term Human Motion Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.07066/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [TaskNPoint: How to Teach Your Humanoid to Hit a Backhand in Minutes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.26215/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The Caltech Tennis Dataset (CalTennis) is a large-scale video benchmark for evaluating monocular-to-3D pose estimation in the wild. CalTennis comprises over 11 million frames (51 hours) of tennis practice and match play from 40 players, captured with 2-6 synchronized cameras at 60 Hz. It is 10 times larger than existing in-the-wild human motion video datasets and 3 times larger than existing MOCAP-ground-truthed datasets, and it is the first large-scale benchmark to provide synchronized multi-view recordings of expert athletic motion. The multi-view setup enables inexpensive, label-free evaluation of monocular-to-3D pose estimation algorithms. We describe a simple, standardized protocol that enables data collection without specialized equipment or expertise, along with fully automated video calibration and synchronization. Benchmarking state-of-the-art monocular-to-3D pose methods on CalTennis, we find that while 3D joint angle recovery is now quite accurate, all models struggle to estimate depth and foot contact consistently. We further propose two novel performance metrics, footwork and stability, as well as qualitatively study body shape inconsistency. These metrics expose previously underexplored failure modes and point to concrete opportunities for improvement in pose estimation and action analysis.