Estimation of yoga postures using machine learning techniques

Abstract

Yoga is a traditional Indian way of keeping the mind and body fit, through physical postures (asanas), voluntarily regulated breathing (pranayama), meditation, and relaxation techniques. The recent pandemic has seen a huge surge in numbers of yoga practitioners, many practicing without proper guidance. This study was proposed to ease the work of such practitioners by implementing deep learning-based methods, which can estimate the correct pose performed by a practitioner. The study implemented this approach using four different deep learning architectures: EpipolarPose, OpenPose, PoseNet, and MediaPipe. These architectures were separately trained using the images obtained from S-VYASA Deemed to be University. This database had images for five commonly practiced yoga postures: tree pose, triangle pose, half-moon pose, mountain pose, and warrior pose. The use of this authentic database for training paved the way for the deployment of this model in real-time applications. The study also compared the estimation accuracy of all architectures and concluded that the MediaPipe architecture provides the best estimation accuracy.

Keywords

• artificial intelligence
• deep learning
• machine learning techniques
• pose estimation techniques
• skeleton and yoga