To recognize the surrounding environment at a high speed and with high accuracy and also to reduce the cost.

This environment recognition system (S) is equipped with a distance measuring device (LRF) which detects an object (1a) being present in a distance measuring area (AR0) by measuring a distance, an image pickup device (CA) which picks up an image (1) including color information for an image pickup area (AR1) being larger than the distance measuring area (AR0), a distance measuring area space specifying means (C3) which specifies an object absence space area (2a) in the distance measuring area (AR0), a space color information acquiring means (C4) which acquires space color information being the color information of the image pickup area (AR1) overlapping with the object absence area (2a), based on the picked-up image (1), and a space discriminating means (C5) which judges, based on the image (1), that the area of the color information conforming to the space color information in the image pickup area (AR1) is an object absence space (1d).

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