This paper presents an embedded vision system based on reconfigurable hardware (FPGA) to perform stereo image processing and 3D mapping of sparse features for autonomous navigation and obstacle detection in industrial settings. We propose an EKF based visual SLAM to achieve a 6D localization of the vehicle even in non flat scenarios. The system uses vision as the only source of information. As a consequence, it operates regardless of the odometry from the vehicle since visual odometry is used. © 2013 IEEE.