Gradient Depth Map Based Ground Plane Detection for Mobile Robot Applications

In the field of navigation and guidance for mobile robots utilizing stereo visual imagery, the main problem to be solved is to detect the ground plane in acquired images by a stereo camera system mounted on the mobile device. This paper focuses on effective detection of ground based on graphical analysis of the gradient depth map evaluated on the input depth map within a given window. The detected ground planes is further divided into blocks and then classified into ground or non-ground regions for elimination of false detected ground planes followed by smoothing in refinement process. This proposed approach also has been shown to be effective in detection of obstacles appearing in the ground plane too while the mobile device is moving. In addition, the algorithm is simple, reliable, feasible, and may be efficiently exploited for implementation in an embedded hardware with limited resources for real-time applications.