Deep learning based 2D human pose estimation: A survey

Human pose estimation has received significant attention recently due to its various applications in the real world. As the performance of the state-of-the-art human pose estimation methods can be improved by deep learning, this paper presents a comprehensive survey of deep learning based human pose estimation methods and analyzes the methodologies employed. We summarize and discuss recent works with a methodology-based taxonomy. Single-person and multi-person pipelines are first reviewed separately. Then, the deep learning techniques applied in these pipelines are compared and analyzed. The datasets and metrics used in this task are also discussed and compared. The aim of this survey is to make every step in the estimation pipelines interpretable and to provide readers a readily comprehensible explanation. Moreover, the unsolved problems and challenges for future research are discussed.