Door detection in 3D colored laser scans for autonomous indoor navigation

Door detection is becoming an increasingly important subject in relation to autonomous mobile robot navigation in indoor environments. This paper presents an original approach that recognizes open and closed doors in 3D laser scanned data. The proposed technique uses both the geometric (i.e. XYZ coordinates) and colour (i.e. RGB/HSV) information provided by a calibrated set of 3D laser scanner and a colour camera. In other words, our technique is developed under a 6D-space framework. The geometry/colour integration and other characteristics of our method make it robust under occlusion and efficient to slight changes in door colours resulting from varying lighting conditions experienced from different scanning locations. The approach is tested in both simulated and real scenes, yielding encouraging results.