Vehicle recognition apparatus and vehicle recognition method

A vehicle recognition apparatus comprising:

• one or more hardware processors to
• acquire a photographed image obtained by photographing, using a stereo camera, a plurality of vehicles forming a column of vehicles on a road from an obliquely rearward direction with respect to the column of vehicles,
• generate a parallax image based on the photographed image,
• estimate a vanishing point in the parallax image,
• generate a plurality of strip regions by dividing a region below the vanishing point in the parallax image in a horizontal direction,
• calculate a representative parallax for each of the strip regions,
• extract strip regions from which the plurality of vehicles is recognizable, from among the strip regions based on the representative parallax,
• couple strip regions adjacent to each other among the extract strip regions to generate a coupled strip region based on a distance distribution model for a vehicular side and back surfaces, and
• recognize the plurality of vehicles from the coupled strip region.