Patent ID: 7949151

Claim:
A vehicle surroundings monitoring apparatus which monitors the surroundings of a vehicle by using an image captured by a camera mounted on the vehicle, comprising: an object extraction process unit which extracts an image area of an object from the image captured by the camera; a pedestrian determination process unit which determines whether or not the object is a pedestrian based on the image area of the object extracted by the object extraction process unit; and an object type determination process unit for determining an object type when the object is determined not to be a pedestrian by the pedestrian determination process unit and when the image area of the object extracted by the object extraction process unit includes a horizontally long first object area in which the ratio of a horizontal width and a vertical width is within a predetermined range and a plurality of second object areas located below the first object area and smaller in area than the first object area, wherein the object type determination process unit determines that the object type is an animal other than a human being in a case where a second area width is greater than one half of a first area width and determines the object type is an artificial structure in the case where the second area width is equal to or less than one half of the first area width, wherein the first area width is the horizontal width of the first object area and the second area width is the horizontal width between the left end on the left side and the right end on the right side of the two or more second object areas.