Disparity Image Plane Segmentation Based Obstacle Map Construction for Mobile Robot

As a part of GPOD (ground plane obstacle detection) technology of autonomous mobile robot, a method for creating front obstacle grid map is presented which utilizes disparity image of binocular camera to obtain information. This method combines both the stereo vision and the traditional 2D image processing technique. The former implements autonomous plane segmentation based on the histogram of disparity image, and regards each plane as scene slice of 3D scenario to extract obstacle's 3D information. The later extracts obstacle information by calculating obstacle profile for each plane, and transforms stereo data from disparity image space to 2D obstacle map space. The obstacle map construction in this method is presented. The experiment results prove the validity and accuracy of this method.