Vehicle exterior environment recognition apparatus

A vehicle exterior environment recognition apparatus comprising:

• a first luminance-image acquiring unit configured to acquire a plurality of first luminance images captured by a plurality of image-capturing units at a predetermined first exposure time, the plurality of image-capturing units being disposed at respective positions different from each other;
• a second luminance-image acquiring unit configured to acquire a plurality of second luminance images captured by the plurality of image-capturing units at a second exposure time, the second exposure time being shorter than the first exposure time;
• a first distance-image generating unit configured to generate a first distance image through pattern matching of the plurality of first luminance images;
• a second distance-image generating unit configured to generate a second distance image through pattern matching of the plurality of second luminance images;
• and
• a composite-image generating unit configured to generate a composite image by extracting one of a first block of the first distance image and a second block of the second distance image, the one of the first block of the first distance image and the second block of the second distance image including a distance having higher reliability, the first block comprising any of blocks of the first distance image, the second block comprising one of blocks of the second distance image corresponding to the first block.