Ground Plane Detection Using an RGB-D Sensor

Ground plane detection is essential for successful navigation of vision based mobile robots. We introduce a very simple but robust ground plane detection method based on depth information obtained using an RGB-Depth sensor. We present two different variations of the method: the simplest one is robust in setups where the sensor pitch angle is fixed and has no roll, whereas the second one can handle changes in pitch and roll angles. Our comparisons show that our approach performs better than the vertical disparity approach. It produces accurate ground plane-obstacle segmentations for difficult scenes which include many obstacles, different floor surfaces, stairs, and narrow corridors.