Patent ID: 8923560

Claim:
An exterior environment recognition device comprising: an image data obtaining unit for obtaining two pieces of image data generated by two image-capturing units of which stereo axes are on a same plane but provided at different positions; a parallax deriving unit for comparing the two pieces of image data, extracting a block highly correlated with any given block including one or more pixels in an image based on one of the image data, from a search range, of which size is determined in advance, in an image based on the other of the image data, and obtaining parallax of both of the blocks; a position information deriving unit for deriving a relative distance of the block from the parallax; a grouping unit for grouping a block of which difference of the relative distance is included within a predetermined range, and specifying one or more specified objects; a specified object selection unit for selecting a specified object which is to be a tracking target, from the one or more specified objects; an offset amount deriving unit, wherein when the relative distance of the selected specified object, which is the specified object that has been selected, becomes less than a threshold value determined in advance, the offset amount deriving unit derives an amount of offset for offsetting the search range in accordance with the relative distance; and an offset execution unit for offsetting the search range based on one of the two pieces of image data by the amount of offset, wherein when the amount of offset is not zero, the position information deriving unit limits deriving of the relative distance in an image other than an image range corresponding to the selected specified object.