To recognize an obstacle in front of a vehicle with excellent accuracy without any effect of the deviation in coordinates of a radar survey and camera image pickup, through the recognition processing of the sensor fusion which is very simple and is performed the same way both in daytime and nighttime.

The minimum value of the horizontal and perpendicular individual residual sum between the latest horizontal and perpendicular edge histograms of a candidate area of the picked-up image of a camera and the horizontal and perpendicular reference edge histogram at each magnification moving in parallel in an estimated moving range, and the minimum value of the integrated residual sum are detected. It is determined whether or not a candidate object is a road-surface vertical object on a road surface depending on whether or not the magnifications of the minimum value of at least both individual residual sums are equal to each other. It is determined whether or not the candidate object is a valid object or an invalid object for detection depending on whether or not the camera side detection magnification is equal to the radar side detection magnification of an obstacle calculated from the change of the relative distance. The obstacle is recognized from the image in the candidate area when it is determined that the candidate object is the road surface vertical object and the valid object for detection.

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