KSL-POSE: A Real-Time 2D Human Pose Estimation Method Based on Modified YOLOv8-Pose Framework

Two-dimensional human pose estimation aims to equip computers with the ability to accurately recognize human keypoints and comprehend their spatial contexts within media content. However, the accuracy of real-time human pose estimation diminishes when processing images with occluded body parts or overlapped individuals. To address these issues, we propose a method based on the YOLO framework. We integrate the convolutional concepts of Kolmogorov–Arnold Networks (KANs) through introducing non-linear activation functions to enhance the feature extraction capabilities of the convolutional kernels. Moreover, to improve the detection of small target keypoints, we integrate the cross-stage partial (CSP) approach and utilize the small object enhance pyramid (SOEP) module for feature integration. We also innovatively incorporate a layered shared convolution with batch normalization detection head (LSCB), consisting of multiple shared convolutional layers and batch normalization layers, to enable cross-stage feature fusion and address the low utilization of model parameters. Given the structure and purpose of the proposed model, we name it KSL-POSE. Compared to the baseline model YOLOv8l-POSE, KSL-POSE achieves significant improvements, increasing the average detection accuracy by 1.5% on the public MS COCO 2017 data set. Furthermore, the model also demonstrates competitive performance on the CrowdPOSE data set, thus validating its generalization ability.