An obstacle recognition apparatus is provided which can recognize an obstacle by accurately extracting a floor surface. It includes a distance image generator (222) to produce a distance image using a disparity image and homogeneous transform matrix, a plane detector (223) to detect plane parameters on the basis of the distance image from the distance image generator (222), a coordinate transformer (224) to transform the homogeneous transform matrix into a coordinate of a ground-contact plane of a robot apparatus (1), and a floor surface detector (225) to detect a floor surface using the plane parameters from the plane detector (223) and result of coordinate transformation from the coordinate transformer (224) and supply the plane parameters to an obstacle recognition block (226). The obstacle recognition block (226) selects one of points on the floor surface using the plane parameters of the floor surface detected by the floor surface detector (225) and recognizes an obstacle on the basis of the selected point.