Long range traversable region detection based on superpixels clustering for mobile robots

Traversable region detection is important for autonomous visual navigation of mobile robots. Only short range traversable regions can be detected using traditional methods based on stereo vision because of the limited image resolution and baseline of stereo vision. In this paper, we propose a novel method to detect long range traversable regions without using any supervised or self-supervised learning process. Superpixels are clustered using an improved spectral clustering algorithm to segment the image effectively, and after integrating short range traversable region detection based on u-v-disparity, the traversable region can be extended to long range naturally. The experimental results show that the proposed method works well in different outdoor/field environments, and the detecting range can be improved greatly in comparison with traditional methods. Furthermore, the proposed superpixels clustering algorithm can also be applied in other robot vision tasks like road detection and object recognition.