Vehicle exterior environment recognition apparatus

A vehicle exterior environment recognition apparatus configured to recognize an environment outside an own vehicle, the apparatus comprising:

• a road surface identifying unit configured to identify a road surface in an image;
• a three-dimensional object identifying unit configured to identify three-dimensional objects each having a height extending vertically upward from the identified road surface;
• a road surface determining unit configured to perform a determination of whether a three-dimensional-object-intervening region between the three-dimensional objects identified by the three-dimensional object identifying unit has a correspondence to the road surface, when the identified three-dimensional objects are separated from each other and are located at respective positions distant from the own vehicle by a same relative distance;
• and
• a three-dimensional object composition unit configured to regard the identified three-dimensional objects that are separated from each other as candidate parts of a unified three-dimensional object, when the three-dimensional-object-intervening region is determined to have no correspondence to the road surface by the road surface determining unit.