IMUCoCo: Enabling Flexible On-Body IMU Placement for Human Pose Estimation and Activity Recognition

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Zhou, Haozhe, Arakawa, Riku, Agarwal, Yuvraj, Goel, Mayank
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Zhou, Haozhe
Arakawa, Riku
Agarwal, Yuvraj
Goel, Mayank
author_facet Zhou, Haozhe
Arakawa, Riku
Agarwal, Yuvraj
Goel, Mayank
contents IMUs are regularly used to sense human motion, recognize activities, and estimate full-body pose. Users are typically required to place sensors in predefined locations that are often dictated by common wearable form factors and the machine learning model's training process. Consequently, despite the increasing number of everyday devices equipped with IMUs, the limited adaptability has seriously constrained the user experience to only using a few well-explored device placements (e.g., wrist and ears). In this paper, we rethink IMU-based motion sensing by acknowledging that signals can be captured from any point on the human body. We introduce IMU over Continuous Coordinates (IMUCoCo), a novel framework that maps signals from a variable number of IMUs placed on the body surface into a unified feature space based on their spatial coordinates. These features can be plugged into downstream models for pose estimation and activity recognition. Our evaluations demonstrate that IMUCoCo supports accurate pose estimation in a wide range of typical and atypical sensor placements. Overall, IMUCoCo supports significantly more flexible use of IMUs for motion sensing than the state-of-the-art, allowing users to place their sensors-laden devices according to their needs and preferences. The framework also supports the ability to change device locations depending on the context and suggests placement depending on the use case.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_01894
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle IMUCoCo: Enabling Flexible On-Body IMU Placement for Human Pose Estimation and Activity Recognition
Zhou, Haozhe
Arakawa, Riku
Agarwal, Yuvraj
Goel, Mayank
Human-Computer Interaction
Machine Learning
IMUs are regularly used to sense human motion, recognize activities, and estimate full-body pose. Users are typically required to place sensors in predefined locations that are often dictated by common wearable form factors and the machine learning model's training process. Consequently, despite the increasing number of everyday devices equipped with IMUs, the limited adaptability has seriously constrained the user experience to only using a few well-explored device placements (e.g., wrist and ears). In this paper, we rethink IMU-based motion sensing by acknowledging that signals can be captured from any point on the human body. We introduce IMU over Continuous Coordinates (IMUCoCo), a novel framework that maps signals from a variable number of IMUs placed on the body surface into a unified feature space based on their spatial coordinates. These features can be plugged into downstream models for pose estimation and activity recognition. Our evaluations demonstrate that IMUCoCo supports accurate pose estimation in a wide range of typical and atypical sensor placements. Overall, IMUCoCo supports significantly more flexible use of IMUs for motion sensing than the state-of-the-art, allowing users to place their sensors-laden devices according to their needs and preferences. The framework also supports the ability to change device locations depending on the context and suggests placement depending on the use case.
title IMUCoCo: Enabling Flexible On-Body IMU Placement for Human Pose Estimation and Activity Recognition
topic Human-Computer Interaction
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.01894