Embodiments of the present disclosure provide a method and apparatus for detecting an obstacle. The method may include: acquiring first point cloud data collected by a first vehicle-mounted laser radar and second point cloud data collected by a second vehicle-mounted laser radar, where a height of the first vehicle-mounted laser radar from a ground is greater than a height of the second vehicle-mounted laser radar from the ground, and a number of wiring harnesses of the first vehicle-mounted laser radar is greater than a number of wiring harnesses of the second vehicle-mounted laser radar; performing ground estimation based on the first point cloud data; filtering out a ground point in the second point cloud data according to the ground estimation result of the first point cloud data; and performing obstacle detection based on the second point cloud data after the ground point is filtered out.