Patent ID: 7671725

Claim:
A vehicle surroundings monitoring apparatus which monitors the surroundings of a vehicle from an image taken by a camera mounted on the vehicle, comprising: an object extraction process unit which extracts an object existing around the vehicle from the image taken by the camera; a pedestrian extraction process unit which extracts a pedestrian from the object extracted by the object extraction process unit; a posture determination process unit which determines the posture of the pedestrian extracted by the pedestrian extraction process unit; an object-to-be-avoided determination process unit which determines whether the object extracted by the object extraction process unit is an object to be avoided which must be avoided from coming into contact with the vehicle by executing a determination algorithm including at least a first determination process on the posture of the pedestrian determined by the posture determination process unit; and a vehicle equipment control process unit which controls equipment of the vehicle at least according to a determination result of the object-to-be-avoided determination process unit.