Patent ID: 7940960

Claim:
A pose estimating device comprising: a dictionary memory configured to store a pose dictionary that includes: training pose information related to various poses of an articulated object, a tree structure of poses that consists of layered nodes, wherein similarity among the training pose information belonging to a lower node is higher than similarity among the training pose information belonging to an upper node, a two class discriminative function for each node in upper layers that is upper than the lowermost layer in the tree structure, which determines on the basis of the training pose information and training image feature information whether or not a pose represented by image feature information belongs to the respective node, where the training image feature information is obtained by capturing virtual images of the articulated object of various sizes and various surface shapes each relating to the training pose information, and a mapping function for each node of the lowermost layer in the tree structure, which transforms image feature information into pose information on the basis of the training image feature information and the training pose information belonging to the nodes; an image feature extracting unit configured to extract observed image feature information from an image of the articulated object; a past information storing unit configured to store past pose estimating information of the articulated object; a pose predicting unit configured to predict a present pose on the basis of the past pose estimating information and a predetermined motion model; a node predicting unit configured to calculate a prior probability as to whether or not each nodes in respective layers of the tree structure includes a pose of a correct solution corresponding to the present pose based on the predicted pose; a two class identifying unit configured to calculate a likelihood of the observed image feature information for each node in the upper layers by using the two class discriminative function stored in the node; a node probability calculating unit configured to calculate a probability in which the pose of the correct solution is in the node in the upper layers from the prior probability and the likelihood; and a pose estimating unit configured to calculate pose information with respect to the lowermost layer by transforming the observed image feature information by the mapping functions stored in the pose dictionary.