The optical flow method is one of the key techniques for obstacle detection. Based primarily on the work by Srinivasan (2000), a C# application was created to implement an algorithm based on the optical flow method. The performance of the application is analyzed with effective experimental results. Significant computational efficiencies were created by expanding the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) processing to the stages before and after the optical flow process, which made the real-time practical applications of obstacle detection possible.