Disclosed is a robot control method based on gesture recognition, comprising: when a distance measurement sensor detects that there is an object within a pre-set range of a robot, starting a hand-waving gesture recognition operation; after the hand-waving gesture recognition operation is started, if the distance measurement sensor currently detects that the duration for which the object is within the pre-set range of the robot is within a pre-set value range, recording one instance of a hand-waving operation; if the distance measurement sensor currently detects that the duration for which the object is within the pre-set range of the robot is not within the pre-set value range, or a time interval between the time when the distance measurement sensor currently detects that there is an object within the pre-set range of the robot and the time when the distance measurement sensor next detects that there is an object within the pre-set range of the robot is greater than a threshold value, stopping the hand-waving gesture recognition operation; and when the hand-waving gesture recognition operation is stopped, executing a corresponding operation on the robot according to the recorded number of hand-waving operations and a pre-set mapping table.