Stereo vision-based obstacle and free space detection in mobile robotics

This paper presents an approach to free space and obstacle detection based on stereo disparity, with applications in mobile robotics. Two maps of an area of interest on the ground plane are computed from the left and right views. Obstacles rising up from the ground occlude different areas in both maps. An obstacle map is computed as the binarized difference between the two maps. Morphological filtering is used to detect the free space from the obstacle map, while obstacles are detected by looking for instances of a suitable obstacle model. Results of the approach in road scenes are presented. Stereo images are taken from a car, with the objective of detecting other cars and free space in cluttered scenes for driving assistance.