description: Discover how to use YOLOv8 for pose estimation tasks. Learn about model training, validation, prediction, and exporting in various formats.
keywords: pose estimation, YOLOv8, Ultralytics, keypoints, model training, image recognition, deep learning
Pose estimation is a task that involves identifying the location of specific points in an image, usually referred to as keypoints. The keypoints can represent various parts of the object such as joints, landmarks, or other distinctive features. The locations of the keypoints are usually represented as a set of 2D `[x, y]` or 3D `[x, y, visible]` coordinates.
The output of a pose estimation model is a set of points that represent the keypoints on an object in the image, usually along with the confidence scores for each point. Pose estimation is a good choice when you need to identify specific parts of an object in a scene, and their location in relation to each other.
YOLOv8 _pose_ models use the `-pose` suffix, i.e. `yolov8n-pose.pt`. These models are trained on the [COCO keypoints](https://github.com/ultralytics/ultralytics/blob/main/ultralytics/cfg/datasets/coco-pose.yaml) dataset and are suitable for a variety of pose estimation tasks.
YOLOv8 pretrained Pose models are shown here. Detect, Segment and Pose models are pretrained on the [COCO](https://github.com/ultralytics/ultralytics/blob/main/ultralytics/cfg/datasets/coco.yaml) dataset, while Classify models are pretrained on the [ImageNet](https://github.com/ultralytics/ultralytics/blob/main/ultralytics/cfg/datasets/ImageNet.yaml) dataset.
[Models](https://github.com/ultralytics/ultralytics/tree/main/ultralytics/cfg/models) download automatically from the latest Ultralytics [release](https://github.com/ultralytics/assets/releases) on first use.
- **mAP<sup>val</sup>** values are for single-model single-scale on [COCO Keypoints val2017](https://cocodataset.org) dataset. <br>Reproduce by `yolo val pose data=coco-pose.yaml device=0`
- **Speed** averaged over COCO val images using an [Amazon EC2 P4d](https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/p4/) instance. <br>Reproduce by `yolo val pose data=coco8-pose.yaml batch=1 device=0|cpu`
YOLO pose dataset format can be found in detail in the [Dataset Guide](../datasets/pose/index.md). To convert your existing dataset from other formats (like COCO etc.) to YOLO format, please use [JSON2YOLO](https://github.com/ultralytics/JSON2YOLO) tool by Ultralytics.
Available YOLOv8-pose export formats are in the table below. You can export to any format using the `format` argument, i.e. `format='onnx'` or `format='engine'`. You can predict or validate directly on exported models, i.e. `yolo predict model=yolov8n-pose.onnx`. Usage examples are shown for your model after export completes.
