KAPAO is an efficient single-stage multi-person human pose estimation model that models keypoints and poses as objects within a dense anchor-based detection framework. When not using test-time augmentation (TTA), KAPAO is much faster and more accurate than previous single-stage methods like DEKR and HigherHRNet:

This repository contains the official PyTorch implementation for the paper:
Rethinking Keypoint Representations: Modeling Keypoints and Poses as Objects for Multi-Person Human Pose Estimation (link coming soon).

Our code was forked from ultralytics/yolov5 at commit 5487451.

1. If you haven't already, install Anaconda or Miniconda.
2. Create a new conda environment with Python 3.6: $ conda create -n kapao python=3.6.
3. Activate the environment: $ conda activate kapao
4. Clone this repo: $ git clone https://github.com/wmcnally/kapao.git
5. Install the dependencies: $ cd kapao && pip install -r requirements.txt
6. Download the trained models: $ sh data/scripts/download_models.sh

Note: FPS calculations includes all processing, including inference, plotting / tracking, image resizing, etc. See demo script arguments for inference options.

This demo runs inference on a 720p dance video (native frame-rate of 25 FPS).

To display the inference results in real-time:
$ python demos/flash_mob.py --weights kapao_s_coco.pt --display --fps

To create the GIF above:
$ python demos/flash_mob.py --weights kapao_s_coco.pt --start 188 --end 196 --gif --fps

This demo runs inference on a 1080p slow motion squash video (native frame-rate of 25 FPS). It uses a simple player tracking algorithm based on the frame-to-frame pose differences.

To display the inference results in real-time:
$ python demos/squash.py --weights kapao_s_coco.pt --display --fps

To create the GIF above:
$ python demos/squash.py --weights kapao_s_coco.pt --start 42 --end 50 --gif --fps

Download the COCO dataset: $ sh data/scripts/get_coco_kp.sh

• KAPAO-S (63.0 AP): $ python val.py --rect
• KAPAO-M (68.5 AP): $ python val.py --rect --weights kapao_m_coco.pt
• KAPAO-L (70.6 AP): $ python val.py --rect --weights kapao_l_coco.pt

• KAPAO-S (64.3 AP): $ python val.py --scales 0.8 1 1.2 --flips -1 3 -1
• KAPAO-M (69.6 AP): $ python val.py --weights kapao_m_coco.pt \
--scales 0.8 1 1.2 --flips -1 3 -1
• KAPAO-L (71.6 AP): $ python val.py --weights kapao_l_coco.pt \
--scales 0.8 1 1.2 --flips -1 3 -1

• KAPAO-S (63.8 AP): $ python val.py --scales 0.8 1 1.2 --flips -1 3 -1 --task test
• KAPAO-M (68.8 AP): $ python val.py --weights kapao_m_coco.pt \
--scales 0.8 1 1.2 --flips -1 3 -1 --task test
• KAPAO-L (70.3 AP): $ python val.py --weights kapao_l_coco.pt \
--scales 0.8 1 1.2 --flips -1 3 -1 --task test

The following commands were used to train the KAPAO models on 4 V100s with 32GB memory each.

KAPAO-S:

python -m torch.distributed.launch --nproc_per_node 4 train.py \
--img 1280 \
--batch 128 \
--epochs 500 \
--data data/coco-kp.yaml \
--hyp data/hyps/hyp.kp-p6.yaml \
--val-scales 1 \
--val-flips -1 \
--weights yolov5s6.pt \
--project runs/s_e500 \
--name train \
--workers 128

KAPAO-M:

python train.py \
--img 1280 \
--batch 72 \
--epochs 500 \
--data data/coco-kp.yaml \
--hyp data/hyps/hyp.kp-p6.yaml \
--val-scales 1 \
--val-flips -1 \
--weights yolov5m6.pt \
--project runs/m_e500 \
--name train \
--workers 128

KAPAO-L:

python train.py \
--img 1280 \
--batch 48 \
--epochs 500 \
--data data/coco-kp.yaml \
--hyp data/hyps/hyp.kp-p6.yaml \
--val-scales 1 \
--val-flips -1 \
--weights yolov5l6.pt \
--project runs/l_e500 \
--name train \
--workers 128

Note: DDP is usually recommended but we found training was less stable for KAPAO-M/L using DDP. We are investigating this issue.

• Install the CrowdPose API to your conda environment:
  $ cd .. && git clone https://github.com/Jeff-sjtu/CrowdPose.git
$ cd CrowdPose/crowdpose-api/PythonAPI && sh install.sh && cd ../../../kapao
• Download the CrowdPose dataset: $ sh data/scripts/get_crowdpose.sh

• KAPAO-S (63.8 AP): $ python val.py --data crowdpose.yaml \
--weights kapao_s_crowdpose.pt --scales 0.8 1 1.2 --flips -1 3 -1
• KAPAO-M (67.1 AP): $ python val.py --data crowdpose.yaml \
--weights kapao_m_crowdpose.pt --scales 0.8 1 1.2 --flips -1 3 -1
• KAPAO-L (68.9 AP): $ python val.py --data crowdpose.yaml \
--weights kapao_l_crowdpose.pt --scales 0.8 1 1.2 --flips -1 3 -1

The following commands were used to train the KAPAO models on 4 V100s with 32GB memory each. Training was performed on the trainval split with no validation. The test results above were generated using the last model checkpoint.

KAPAO-S:

python -m torch.distributed.launch --nproc_per_node 4 train.py \
--img 1280 \
--batch 128 \
--epochs 300 \
--data data/crowdpose.yaml \
--hyp data/hyps/hyp.kp-p6.yaml \
--val-scales 1 \
--val-flips -1 \
--weights yolov5s6.pt \
--project runs/cp_s_e300 \
--name train \
--workers 128 \
--noval

KAPAO-M:

python train.py \
--img 1280 \
--batch 72 \
--epochs 300 \
--data data/coco-kp.yaml \
--hyp data/hyps/hyp.kp-p6.yaml \
--val-scales 1 \
--val-flips -1 \
--weights yolov5m6.pt \
--project runs/cp_m_e300 \
--name train \
--workers 128 \
--noval

KAPAO-L:

python train.py \
--img 1280 \
--batch 48 \
--epochs 300 \
--data data/crowdpose.yaml \
--hyp data/hyps/hyp.kp-p6.yaml \
--val-scales 1 \
--val-flips -1 \
--weights yolov5l6.pt \
--project runs/cp_l_e300 \
--name train \
--workers 128 \
--noval