Vehicle surrounding monitoring apparatus

A vehicle surrounding monitoring apparatus for detecting an object which exists in the periphery of a self vehicle and for detecting a relative speed calculated on the basis of a relative position with respect to the self vehicle and said relative position, said apparatus comprising:

• an object position detecting means for periodically detecting object position data including a distance of from the self vehicle to the object that exists in the periphery of the self vehicle and an orientation directed from the self vehicle toward the object;
• a self-vehicle speed detecting means for periodically detecting the speed of the self vehicle;
• a yaw rate detecting means for periodically detecting a yaw rate which is the rotation rate of the self vehicle in a yaw direction;
• an object position converting means for converting the previous object position data detected by said object position detecting means into object position data which is estimated to be obtained when the previous object position is detected at the present self-vehicle position on the basis of the self-vehicle speed information detected by said self-vehicle speed detecting means and the yaw rate information detected by said object position detecting means;
• an object position storing means for storing the object position data converted by said object position converting means;
• a stop object judging means for judging whether said object is a stop object, or not, on the basis of the object position data stored in said object position storing means and the object position data detected at the present time by said object position detecting means;
• and
• a relative speed calculating means for judging whether the previous object and the present object which are detected by said object position detecting means are identical with each other, or not, on the basis of the object position data detected at the previous time by said object position detecting means, the object position data detected at the present time by said object position detecting means, and the judging result by said stop object judging means to calculate the relative speed on the basis of the relative position of the same object.