Abstract: This paper presents a robust technique for a real time estimation of both camera’s position and orientation—referred as pose. A commercial stereo vision system is used. Unlike previous approaches, it can be used either for urban or highway scenarios. The proposed technique consists of two stages. Initially, a compact 2D representation of the original 3D data points is computed. Then, a RANSAC based least squares approach is used for fitting a plane to the road. At the same time,
relative camera’s position and orientation are computed. The proposed technique is intended to be used on a driving assistance scheme for applications such as obstacle or pedestrian detection. Experimental results on urban environments with different road geometries are presented.