Profile

M.Sc. Stephanie Käs
Room 129
Phone: +49 241 8020773

Stephanie Käs

PhD Researcher - iBehave Excellence Network - Human Motion Understanding

ZONTA Women in STEM Aachen 2026

News & Updates

Admitted as Postgraduate Researcher to the University of Bristol (UK)
Received the JSPS Scholarship at NII Tokyo (Japan)
Received Aachen's ZONTA Women in STEM Award 2026
Paper accepted at WACV 2026 Workshop

About Me

I am a PhD researcher in computer vision at RWTH Aachen University, focusing on human movement understanding in challenging real-world environments such as fisheye and space imagery. My work combines human pose estimation, gesture recognition, and large-scale foundation models to enable robust perception for human-robot interaction and astronaut monitoring.

Since late 2024, I have been initiating a new research direction on astronaut monitoring and human perception in space environments, with initial results currently under review.

I have supervised multiple Bachelor’s and Master’s theses and contributed to international collaborations. I place strong emphasis on clear science communication and building research systems that are both flexible and reproducible.

Research Interests

Human Pose Estimation & Motion Understanding
Gesture & Action Recognition
Human-Robot Interaction (HRI)
Foundation Models for Vision
Fisheye & Omnidirectional Vision
Astronaut Monitoring & Space Vision

Publications

Käs, S., Schönherr, E. et al.:
We Still See Broken Limbs: Towards Anatomical Realism in GenAI via Human Preference Learning., WACV Workshop (2026).
Käs, S., Burenko, A., Markert, L. et al.:
How do Foundation Models Compare to Skeleton-Based Approaches for Gesture Recognition in Human-Robot Interaction?, IEEE RO-MAN (2026).
Käs, S., Peter, S., Thillmann, H. et al.:
Systematic Evaluation of Different Projection Methods for Monocular 3D Human Pose Estimation on Heavily Distorted Fisheye Images, ICRA (2026).
Dort, K., Bilk, J., Käs, S. et al.:
Comparison of supervised and unsupervised anomaly detection in Belle II pixel detector data
Eur. Phys. J. C 82, 587 (2022).

Supervision & Mentoring

Current Team: O. A. Culha, M. Flaig, F. Krückel, O. Osmanalp, M. Sayegh, A. Weissberg, L. Woyke

Former Projects: - M. Flaig: "Towards Fine-Grained Human Motion Descriptions" (B. Sc. Thesis, 05/25–09/25)
- B. Thal: "Comparison of Person De-Identification Methods in Human Pose Estimation" (B.Sc. Thesis, 05/25–09/25)
- E. Schönherr: "Anatomical Realism in AI-Generated Human Images" (M. Sc. Thesis, 09/25–11/25)
- L. Markert: "Gesture Recognition Using a Video Foundation Model" (B. Sc. Thesis, 09/24–03/25)
- S. Peter: Fisheye Human Pose Estimation (Intern, 11/23–10/24)
- H. Thillmann: "Re-Engineering an Absolute Pose Estimation Architecture: Enabling Extensibility via Modularization" (M. Sc. Thesis, 09/23–10/24)
- A. Burenko: "Stabilization, Tracking, and Gesture Recognition Methods within Skeleton-based Human Pose Estimation Framework" (M. Sc. Thesis, 09/23–09/24)
- V. Hilla: "An Analysis of Error Sources to Improve Temporal Consistency in 3D Human Pose Estimation" (M. Sc. Thesis, 09/23–07/24)
- T. Schellhaas: "Identifizierung von langsamen Pionen durch Support Vector Machines" (B. Sc. Thesis)
- Project Leader: "Stratospheric Balloon Research Project" "StratoGI" (JLU Gießen)

Teaching Experience

Lectureship: Statistics for Geosciences (2022/23, JLU Gießen)
Exercise Teaching Assistant: (Advanced) Machine Learning, Computer Vision (RWTH Aachen)
Seminar Teaching Assistant: Historical & Current Milestones in Machine Learning and Computer Vision (RWTH Aachen)
Lab Teaching Assistant: Experimental Physics Lab I–III (JLU Gießen)

Invited Talks & Outreach

Invited Talk: Deutsches Museum München 2025
Invited Talk: HASCO Summer School 2024 (University of Göttingen)
Invited Talk: ErUM-Data-Hub 2023/24 (RWTH Aachen, TU Dresden)
Guest Speaker: JLU Digitaltag 2024
Invited Talk: Belle II Research Meeting 2022 (TUM)
Public Speaker: Student Hybrid Rocket Team "HybridLaunch"

Availability

Please apply for thesis projects in human monitoring for space applications in September 2026.

Publications

Systematic Evaluation of Different Projection Methods for Monocular 3D Human Pose Estimation on Heavily Distorted Fisheye Images

Stephanie Käs, Timm Linder, Bastian Leibe

International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2025

Authors: Stephanie Käs, Sven Peter, Henrik Thillmann, Anton Burenko, Timm Linder, David Adrian, and Dennis Mack, Bastian Leibe

In this work, we tackle the challenge of 3D human pose estimation in fisheye images, which is crucial for applications in robotics, human-robot interaction, and automotive perception. Fisheye cameras offer a wider field of view, but their distortions make pose estimation difficult. We systematically analyze how different camera models impact prediction accuracy and introduce a strategy to improve pose estimation across diverse viewing conditions.

A key contribution of our work is FISHnCHIPS, a novel dataset featuring 3D human skeleton annotations in fisheye images, including extreme close-ups, ground-mounted cameras, and wide-FOV human poses. To support future research, we will be publicly releasing this dataset.

More details coming soon — stay tuned for the final publication! Looking forward to sharing our findings at ICRA 2025!