A new method for obstacle detection based on Kinect depth image

Obstacle detection is a key technology of intelligent transportation and autonomous robot navigation. Aiming at the shortages of traditional obstacle detection technologies, the paper applies the Kinect depth camera as the sensor of obstacle detection system, and an obstacle detection method based on Kinect depth image is proposed on the theoretical basis of Kinect real-time 3D reconstruction and Meanshift segmentation. A series of experiments are carried out in different scenes, and the results show that the method can detect obstacles exactly in complex environments and it´s robust to the affects of illumination, so it has a certain practical significance for the research of obstacle detection technology.