This paper uses multi-sensor data fusion technology to design and develop a multi-sensor based basketball robot’s target recognition and positioning system in an unknown environment. We establish the movement model of the basketball robot, and combine the hardware configuration of the basketball robot, analyse the methods of speed control, position control, and direction control, propose a fuzzy obstacle avoidance strategy in the basketball robot movement process, and simulate the obstacle avoidance strategy. The simulation results show that the proposed fuzzy obstacle avoidance strategy is effective. Carry out the experiment of basketball robot target calibration, build the basketball robot monitoring system, and realize data transmission and real-time image processing. Experiments show that the basketball robot can achieve target recognition and positioning tasks in an unknown environment (obstacle comparison rules). It proves the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed following algorithm. It illustrates the effectiveness of the system designed in this paper.