PARKING ASSIST APPARATUS

A parking assist apparatus of a vehicle includes an image recognition ECU and a vehicle control ECU. The image recognition ECU extracts characteristic points contained in an image of a surrounding region of the vehicle captured during a travel. The vehicle control ECU can register, as parking lot information, the position of a parking lot and a piece of information regarding characteristic points contained in an image of a scene of the entrance of the parking lot. The vehicle control ECU can automatically park the vehicle in the registered parking lot. The image recognition ECU extracts the characteristic points contained in the image of the surrounding region when the distance between the vehicle and the entrance of the registered parking lot is equal to or shorter than a threshold distance, and does not extract the characteristic points when the distance is longer than the threshold distance.