Patent ID: 7526104

Claim:
A vehicle surroundings monitoring apparatus that extracts a body present in the surroundings of a vehicle as an object, based on an image captured by an infrared imaging device, comprising: a binarized object extraction device that extracts a binarized object from image data obtained by binarizing a gray scale image of the image; a region setting device that sets a region including the binarized object extracted by the binarized object extraction device on the gray scale image; a luminance status quantity calculation device that calculates, as a luminance status quantity, an integrated value of luminance value along a vertical direction for each horizontal position in the region set by the region setting device; a luminance distribution status quantity calculation device that calculates, as a luminance distribution status quantity relating to the luminance distribution in the region, a width of region in which the luminance status quantity calculated by the luminance status quantity calculation device is equal to or greater than a predetermined luminance value; a luminance distribution status quantity determination device that determines whether or not the luminance distribution quantity calculated by the luminance distribution quantity calculation device exceeds a predetermined value; and an object type determination device that determines a type of the object based on a determination result of the luminance distribution status quantity determination device.