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To explore the problem of distance transformations while obstacle existing, this paper presents an obstacle-avoiding Euclidean distance transform method based on cellular automata. This research took the South China Sea as an example, imported the data of land-sea distribution and target points, took the length of the shortest obstacle-avoiding path from current cell to the target cells as the state of a cellular, designed the state transform rule of each cellular that considering a distance operator, then simulated the propagation of obstacle-avoiding distance, and got the result raster of obstacle-avoiding distance transform. After analyzing the effect and precision of obstacle avoiding, we reached the following conclusions:first, the presented method can visually and dynamically show the process of obstacle-avoiding distance transform, can automate calculate the shortest distance bypass the land; second, the method has auto update mechanism, each cellular can rectify distance value according to its neighbor cellular during the simulation process; At last, it provides an approximate solution for exact obstacle-avoiding Euclidean distance transform, the proportional error is less than 3.96%. The proposed method can apply to the fields of shipping routes design, maritime search and rescue, and so on.