Vehicle zone monitoring apparatus

摘要

A vehicle zone monitoring apparatus that detects physical bodies present in the vicinity of the vehicle from infrared images photographed by infrared cameras provided on the vehicle includes an object extracting device that extracts object images that emit infrared radiation from the infrared image and an artificial structure identifying device that identifies whether or not an object is an artificial structure by comparing an image of a search zone in proximity to the object extracted by the object extraction device, to a reference image of a pre-registered artificial structure which serves as an element that defines an artificial structure, and that identifies the object as an artificial structure if: within the search zone in proximity to the object, a section having a high correlation with the reference image exists; and a distance between the vehicle and the object is equal to a distance between the vehicle and the section having the high correlation with said reference image.