Vision-based Detection of Kerbs and Steps

A key component of a technological aid for the partially sighted (TAPS) is a system to detect kerbs and steps. In this paper, a vision-based kerb detection system is described which uses the Hough Transform to find clusters of parallel lines in the image as evidence for a kerb. This is combined with a stereo vision-based obstacle detection algorithm. Experiments show that kerb regions are identified correctly from the images. An error analysis of the obstacle detection algorithm enables the kerb height, and its uncertainty, to be determined.