TRAVEL ASSISTANCE DEVICE, AND TRAVEL ASSISTANCE METHOD FOR TRAVEL ASSISTANCE DEVICE

A travel assistance device according to the present invention comprises: a region extraction unit () that extracts a specific region that includes traffic participants around a host vehicle from image information of sensor data; a risk derivation unit () that derives the degree of risk for safe travel of the host vehicle in relation to the traffic participants in the extracted specific region; a priority-setting unit () that sets the processing priority of the specific region according to the degree of risk; a processing-load-setting unit () that sets the processing load of information of the specific region according to the processing priority; and a recognition-processing unit () that performs traffic participant recognition on the basis of processing load information from the processing-load-setting unit.