The present invention provides an automotive environment monitoring device to detect the existence of an object, a pedestrian or the like, with high accuracy even if one part of the object is overlapped with the background of an image obtained from an imaging unit mounted on the vehicle. An area where the object exists in the image obtained from an infrared camera (102) is set as a first area (A1i) and a lower portion of the first area (A1i) is set as a second area (A2i). A feature of the object is extracted with respect to the second area (A2i) and the object is identified based on the extracted feature. Thereby, even in the case where the first area (A1i) has been set but the feature of an upper part of the object can not be extracted due to the upper part of the object being overlapped with the background of the image, the object can still be identified with high accuracy by extracting the feature of a lower part of the object in the second area (A2i).