Towards Scalable Probabilistic Human Motion Prediction with Gaussian Processes for Safe Human-Robot Collaboration

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2603.07096v1
• Date: Sat, 07 Mar 2026 08:11:46 GMT
• Title: Towards Scalable Probabilistic Human Motion Prediction with Gaussian Processes for Safe Human-Robot Collaboration
• Abstract summary: We propose a structured variational Gaussian Process (GP) framework for full-body human motion prediction.<n>Our model achieves up to 50 lower kernel density estimate negative log-likelihood (KDE NLL) than strong baselines.<n>Despite its probabilistic formulation, our model requires only 0.24-0.35 M parameters, roughly eight times fewer than comparable approaches.
• Score: 6.846949601451734
• License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/
• Abstract: Accurate human motion prediction with well-calibrated uncertainty is critical for safe human-robot collaboration (HRC), where robots must anticipate and react to human movements in real time. We propose a structured multitask variational Gaussian Process (GP) framework for full-body human motion prediction that captures temporal correlations and leverages joint-dimension-level factorization for scalability, while using a continuous 6D rotation representation to preserve kinematic consistency. Evaluated on Human3.6M (H3.6M), our model achieves up to 50 lower kernel density estimate negative log-likelihood (KDE NLL) than strong baselines, a mean continuous ranked probability score (CRPS) of 0.021 m, and deterministic mean angle error (MAE) that is 3-18% higher than competitive deep learning methods. Empirical coverage analysis shows that the fraction of ground-truth outcomes contained within predicted confidence intervals gradually decreases with horizon, remaining conservative for lower-confidence intervals and near-nominal for higher-confidence intervals, with only modest calibration drift at longer horizons. Despite its probabilistic formulation, our model requires only 0.24-0.35 M parameters, roughly eight times fewer than comparable approaches, and exhibits modest inference times, indicating suitability for real-time deployment. Extensive ablation studies further validated the choice of 6D rotation representation and Matern 3/2 + Linear kernel, and guided the selection of the number of inducing points and latent dimensionality. These results demonstrate that scalable GP-based models can deliver competitive accuracy together with reliable and interpretable uncertainty estimates for downstream robotics tasks such as motion planning and collision avoidance.

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