Patent ID: 7957556

Claim:
A vehicle surroundings monitoring apparatus comprising: an object extraction process unit which extracts an object existing in an imaging area of a camera mounted on a vehicle from an image captured by the camera; an object type determination process unit which determines the type of the extracted object on the basis of the image of the object in the captured image; and a vertical symmetry determination process unit which determines whether a degree of vertical symmetry of the extracted object is high or low on the basis of the image of the object in the captured image, wherein the object type determination process unit is constructed to determine the type of the extracted object with a distinction between a predetermined kind of living body including at least a person and other object types, and includes a first-type determination process unit constructed to determine the type of the object to be other than a living body in the case where the degree of vertical symmetry of the object is determined to be high by the vertical symmetry determination process unit, and further includes a second-type determination process unit constructed to determine whether the object is the predetermined kind of living body, on the basis of the image of the object in the captured image, for objects other than those each determined not to be a living body by the first-type determination process unit among the extracted objects, when the degree of vertical symmetry of the object is determined to be low by the vertical symmetry determination process unit.