The invention discloses a barrier and travelable area detection method based on a vehicle-mounted binocular camera. The barrier and travelable area detection method comprises the following steps of S1, taking an image through a binocular camera; S2, preprocessing the image; S3, calculating the final matching cost of each pixel point in the image; S4, calculating through the final matching cost to obtain a v-disparity map; S5, determining the horizon line and the road scope by means of the v-disparity map; S6, calculating to obtain a barrier-road intersecting line in the road scope; S7, determining the scope of the current lane and the outermost lane; S8, calculating to obtain the height of the barrier on the part above the barrier-road intersecting line; S9, determining the image areas which belong to the same barrier; and S10, outputting the road area information and barrier information. Under the premise that disparity precision is not reduced, unnecessary binocular disparity map calculation is avoided, and therefore the real-time performance of the algorithm is greatly improved, and the barrier and travelable area detection method based on the vehicle-mounted binocular camera is suitable for fields of driving warning, automatic driving and the like.