Obstacle detection based on qualitative and quantitative 3D reconstruction

Three different algorithms for mobile robot vision-based obstacle detection are presented in this paper each based on different assumptions The first two algorithms are qualitative in that they return only yes/no answers regarding the presence of obstacles in the field of view; no 3D reconstruction is performed. They have the advantage of fast determination of the existence of obstacles in a scene based on the solvability of a linear system. The first algorithm uses information about the ground plane, while the second only assumes that the ground is planar. The third algorithm is quantitative in that it continuously estimates the ground plane and reconstructs partial 3D structures by determining the height above the ground plane of each point in the scene. Experimental results are presented for real and simulated data, and the performance of the three algorithms under different noise levels is compared in simulation. We conclude that in terms of the robustness of performance, the third algorithm is superior to the other two.