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Obstacle-Free Pathway Detection by Means of Depth Maps

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Abstract

The detection of surrounding obstacle-free space is an essential task for many intelligent automotive and robotic applications. In this paper we present a method to detect obstacle-free pathways in real-time using depth maps from a pair of stereo images. Depth maps are obtained by processing the disparity between left and right images from a stereo-vision system. The proposed technique assumes that depth of pixels in obstacle-free pathways should increase slightly and linearly from the bottom of the image to the top. The proposed real-time detection checks whether the depth of groups of image columns matches a linear model. Only pixels fulfilling the matching requirements are identified as obstacle-free pathways. Experimental results with real outdoor stereo images show that the method performance is promising.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centro de Investigación en Tecnologías Gráficas, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Camino de Vera s/n, 46022, Valencia, Spain

    Nuria Ortigosa & Guillermo Peris-Fajarnés

  2. Instituto Universitario de Matemática Pura y Aplicada, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Camino de Vera s/n, 46022, Valencia, Spain

    Samuel Morillas

Authors
  1. Nuria Ortigosa
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  2. Samuel Morillas
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  3. Guillermo Peris-Fajarnés
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Correspondence to Nuria Ortigosa.

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Ortigosa, N., Morillas, S. & Peris-Fajarnés, G. Obstacle-Free Pathway Detection by Means of Depth Maps. J Intell Robot Syst 63, 115–129 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-010-9498-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-010-9498-4

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