POSE ESTIMATING DEVICE AND POSE ESTIMATING METHOD

A pose estimating device includes: a pose dictionary; an image feature extracting unit configured to extract observed image feature information; 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; a node predicting unit configured to calculate a prior probability as to whether each nodes includes a present pose; an identifying unit configured to calculate a likelihood of the observed image feature information for each node; a node probability calculating unit configured to calculate a probability in which the present pose belongs to the node in the upper layer; and a pose estimating unit configured to calculate pose information.