A relative position of an object in the surroundings of a vehicle is estimated based on a two-dimensional camera image. A control unit determines an object contour of the object from the camera image and determines at least one digital object template that represents the object based on the object contour. The control unit forward projects the at least one object template from respective different positions onto an image plane of the camera image. Each forward-projected object template yields a respective two-dimensional contour proposal, and the control unit compares the contour proposals with the object contour of the object.