1. A target recognition system to recognize one or more recognition targets, operatively connected to a stereo imaging device to capture a stereo image of an area ahead of the target recognition system, the target recognition system comprising: a parallax calculator to calculate parallax of the stereo image including two captured images acquired by the stereo imaging device; a target candidate detector to detect a candidate set of recognition target areas, based on a luminance image of one of the captured images; and a target recognition processor to limit the candidate set of recognition target areas detected by the target candidate detector within a range of threshold values of characteristics in the candidate set of recognition target areas set in advance based on the parallax calculated by the parallax calculator to extract and output the one or more recognition targets.