The invention relates to an obstacle identification method for smart vehicles. The obstacle identification method includes the following steps that: 1) data points of original scanning point cloud three-dimensional laser radar of surrounding environment of the vehicles under a spherical coordinate system are obtained, and obstacle points are screened out from all the data points; 2) the obstacle points are grouped according to the horizontal azimuth angles of the obstacle points and the radial distances of the obstacle points relative to a three-dimensional laser radar sensor; and 3) each group of obstacle points correspond to one obstacle, and the categories of the obstacles can be obtained according to the relative position relationships of the obstacle points in each group. Compared with the prior art, and according to the obstacle identification method for the smart vehicles of the invention, the intrinsic unity of the measurement principles of the a three-dimensional laser radar and a point cloud data spherical coordinate representation method is utilized; it is point cloud data that are analyzed based on spherical coordinates, and the Cartesian coordinates of the point cloud data are not analyzed, and therefore, high efficiency can be realized; and at the same time, the original data of point cloud are directly analyzed, and grid division is not needed to perform on the point cloud, and therefore, processing efficiency can be improved.