Vehicle navigation with pedestrians and determining vehicle free space

A process for recognising a gesture of a pedestrian 2813 and controlling a navigation action of a vehicle 2815 based on the recognised gesture. The process involving obtaining images of an environment 2811 of the vehicle and performing visual analysis of the environment. The visual analysis involving the detection of a pedestrian in the environment of the vehicle, identification of multiple points corresponding to the pedestrian and the establishment of a skeletal form of the pedestrian. Based on the skeletal form the orientation of the pedestrian is determined and a gesture of the pedestrian in the determined orientation is determined base don the movement of the skeletal form. The vehicle implementing a navigational action based on the detected gesture. The arrangement may involve depth measurements of the environment being combined with the images to assess the environment. The gesture preferably is a hand signal of the pedestrian to the vehicle such as a signal to stop or continue. The skeletal form preferably being made up of the multiple points, where the multiple points represent the hand, forearm, upper arm or head of the pedestrian. The process preferably involving at least one trained model trained to recognise the orientation of a pedestrian or part of a pedestrian from images.