Pose Estimation - Key Points Outside Bounding Box

[pedestrianman]

Hi everyone!

I’m working on a pose estimation project where I need to track a flock of sheep entering a pen. Here’s an example of the kind of images I’m dealing with:

The issue is that the sheep are packed closely together, and there’s a lot of overlap between them, so trying to define a bounding box for each one has been a nightmare.

I was thinking of simplifying things by using the sheep’s heads as the bounding boxes and then adding two additional key points outside the box to estimate the body position.

Does this approach make sense? Could having key points outside the bounding box cause any issues?

Thanks for you help!