Endoscope apparatus

An endoscope apparatus, comprising:

• an endoscope which has an insertion portion provided with a distal end portion and a bendable bending portion at a distal end side, and is inserted into a body cavity of a subject;
• a relative position calculation section which calculates a relative position of the distal end portion in the body cavity to the subject;
• a selection section which selects a search method corresponding to the relative position from a plurality of search methods for searching for a bending direction of the bending portion, based on the calculated relative position;
• a bending direction determination section which determines the bending direction of the bending portion according to the search method selected by the selection section;
• and
• a bending drive section which bends and drives the bending portion based on the bending direction determined by the bending direction determination section.