251 results about "Car navigation systems" patented technology

A system is provided for providing location-specific images to a mobile device for display. The system generally comprises three components: a mobile device having a screen, a position identification system (e.g., a GPS receiver) that determines the position of the mobile device, and a database containing location-specific images taken at various locations. Each location-specific image is associated with geographic coordinates of the location at which the image was taken. Based on the position of the mobile device as determined by the position identification system, a location-specific image is selected from the database and displayed on the screen of the mobile device. For example, when a user is using the mobile device as a car navigation system, a location-specific image of the user's destination location can be selected and displayed when the determined position of the mobile device comes within a certain distance from the geographic coordinates of the destination location.

In a car navigation system (1), a position information detection means (11) detects position information on a vehicle using, for example, a GPS. A travel information history of the vehicle obtained based on the detected position information is accumulated in a travel information history means (15). When detecting an event such as start of an engine, an action prediction means (17) predicts a destination of the vehicle by referring to a route to the current time and to the accumulated travel information history. Commercial or traffic information regarding the predicted destination is acquired by an information acquisition means (18) from a server (2), and then is displayed on a screen, for example, by an information provision means (19).

A traffic information providing system externally acquires traffic information including information relating to the travel time of a link, calculates a travel time for a non-provision link to which no travel time is provided through estimate / complement operation. The estimate / complement operation is carried out with use of travel times, emergencies, travel times of links in the vicinity of the non-provision link, and so on, obtained in the near past. The system stores and statistically processes the externally-acquired traffic information, and also estimates a travel time in the near future. When there is an abnormality in the acquired traffic information, the system deletes the abnormality, regards the information as a non-provision link, calculates a probability distribution of travel times of links, calculates a probability distribution of travel times of the entire route made up of a plurality of links, and also calculates a probability for a specific travel time range.

A car navigation map update system includes map update data delivery equipment and one or more car navigation terminals. The map update data delivery equipment includes a map update data broadcasting section for broadcasting map update data by radio waves. Each car navigation terminal receives the broadcast map update data, stores the map update data in a map update data storing medium, and utilizes the map update data in connection with map information data prestored in a map data recording medium. This enables the terminals to collect latest map data using a receiver already installed in the car navigation terminals without adding a data transmitter, thereby solving a problem of a conventional car navigation system which requires a data transmitter installed in the car navigation terminal for sending a message to a host to obtain the map update data, and hence complicates the configuration and increases the cost of the system.

A method provides a sequence of travel instructions that reports fuel-efficient routes calculated with regard to vehicle specifications, geography of terrain, and complexity of travel route. An operator selects the desired starting and ending location via a client interface of a software application. When the user selects “most fuel efficient route,” the fuel-efficient route (FER) utility of the application prompts for entry of the make, model, and year of the operator's vehicle. If the FER utility is embedded in an in-car navigation system, the information about the vehicle characteristics is preprogrammed during installation (e.g., at the factory). The FER utility uses a number of metrics and the vehicle's characteristics, to generate an optimal route for efficient fuel consumption. The invention provides means for an operator of a route planning application to optimize the driving directions for optimally predicted fuel usage.

The present invention involves a Universal Geographic Database (“UGD”). The UGD is an automated, central or distributed, registry of real-world locations and location-related information for businesses and other entities, analogous to the registry of domain names for Internet and web sites. By this central registry, businesses and other entities are facilitated to post their location and location-related information in a single place, for all users who need or want it; and users can refer to this single place, via the Internet, Web, and other telecommunications devices, to obtain accurate, complete and timely location and location-based information about the registered businesses and other entities. Each record of the UGD is keyed by a proprietary location address (PLA) based on the World Geographic Referencing System (WGRS), and optionally may have one or more proprietary location addresses (PLAs), which also may serve as keys. Associated with the PLA keys, each UGD record generally includes the full name for the business or other entity, its street address, and miscellaneous contact information (e.g., telephone number, facsimile number, e-mail address, internet website address, wireless website address). Other more dynamic, customized information (e.g., store hours, credit cards accepted, inventory, prices, specials, hours, parking) also may be available in the UGD record or linked to the UGD record. Users of any device or service can access the UGD through one or more location name servers (LNS), which can provide access to the UGD or other location-based information linked to the UGD or LNS. Based on the WGRS, PLAs provide, in addition to unique keys for UGD records, a user-friendly notation for location naming in the real-world and on all types of location-sensitive electronic devices, from web phones to in-car navigation systems. Given the UGD, these ULA / PLAs are as important to real-world businesses as their domain names because these WGRS addresses drive real-world commerce to physical business locations just as domain names drive e-commerce Internet or web sites.

If a route has not yet been set in a car navigation apparatus, and when a vehicle approaches a specific crossing or a charging station located ahead of a current-driving road, or when remaining charge of a battery becomes less, the navigation apparatus retrieves and displays information about charging stations of the respective branching directions. When the vehicle approaches a specific crossing, the navigation apparatus guides information for indicating whether or not a charging station is present, a distance, and whether or not the vehicle can reach the charging station with respect to each of directions branched from the specific crossing. Also, when a charging station is located ahead of the road, the navigation apparatus retrieves charging stations of the respective branching destinations at a specific crossing located in front of the road, and judges whether or not the vehicle can be driven up to the respective retrieved charging stations.

In the present invention a traffic information providing apparatus makes a vehicle location and a running date a starting point, and predicts arrival time to each link included in a designated area, based on current traffic information provided by a traffic information center; meteorological forecast information provided by a meteorological information center; and statistical traffic information acquired from a traffic information data base where past traffic information is stored, thereby produces meteorological consideration traffic prediction information of the link, and sends the produced meteorological consideration traffic prediction information to a car navigation device. Then the car navigation device is configured to receive the produced meteorological consideration traffic prediction information and to search a guidance route, based on the produced meteorological consideration traffic prediction information.

There is provided a communications-type car navigation system including a vehicle-mounted terminal and a server. When transferring, to the terminal, the result of a route searching which the server has performed, the server transfers the data that will satisfy the requirements of a route guiding method which the user wishes. Also, the server transfers the route data that has been compressed. Concerning the map data as well, the server transfers only the necessary attributes thereof. Moreover, the following conditions allow the operability to be enhanced: the selection of a map transferring method and the route guiding method where the driving state has been taken into consideration, and the selection of a guiding unit which the user wishes.

A controller obtains a planned travel distance from a current position of a vehicle to a preset charging point from a car navigation system, and based on the obtained planned travel distance, sets upper and lower limit values for controlling SOC of an electric storage lower as it comes closer to the charging point. The controller controls the SOC of the electric storage such that the SOC is within the set upper and lower limits of SOC control.

A system is provided for providing location-specific images to a mobile device for display. The system generally comprises three components: a mobile device having a screen, a position identification system (e.g., a GPS receiver) that determines the position of the mobile device, and a database containing location-specific images taken at various locations. Each location-specific image is associated with geographic coordinates of the location at which the image was taken. Based on the position of the mobile device as determined by the position identification system, a location-specific image is selected from the database and displayed on the screen of the mobile device. For example, when a user is using the mobile device as a car navigation system, a location-specific image of the user's destination location can be selected and displayed when the determined position of the mobile device comes within a certain distance from the geographic coordinates of the destination location.

A traffic information providing system externally acquires traffic information including information relating to the travel time of a link, calculates a travel time for a non-provision link to which no travel time is provided through estimate / complement operation. The estimate / complement operation is carried out with use of travel times, emergencies, travel times of links in the vicinity of the non-provision link, and so on, obtained in the near past. The system stores and statistically processes the externally-acquired traffic information, and also estimates a travel time in the near future. When there is an abnormality in the acquired traffic information, the system deletes the abnormality, regards the information as a non-provision link, calculates a probability distribution of travel times of links, calculates a probability distribution of travel times of the entire route made up of a plurality of links, and also calculates a probability for a specific travel time range.

A method of changing a display mode in a car navigation system, the method including: acquiring distance information from a current vehicle location to a guide point; and gradually changing the display mode into any one of a two-dimensional display mode and a three-dimensional display mode based on the distance information.

A face portion detection device, a behavior content classification device, a speech content classification device, a car navigation system, a face direction classification device, a face portion detection device control program, a behavior content classification device control program, a face portion detection device control method, and a behavior content classification device control method are provided for appropriately classifying a behavior content of the object person from a captured image including the face of the object person. A speech section detection device 1 includes an image capturing unit 10, a data storage unit 11, an image processing unit 12, a lip region detection unit 13, feature extraction unit 14, and a speech section detection unit 15. The lip region detection unit 13 uses a dedicated SVM to detect a lip region from a captured image, and the speech section detection unit 15 uses features of an image of a detected lip region and a dedicated HMM to detect a speech section.

A car navigation system changes from a normal guidance mode to a simplifying guidance mode when determining that part or all of sections in a guidance route is familiar or specific to an occupant. The simplifying guidance mode provides no audio guidance or simplified audio guidance with respect to route-related information compared to the normal guidance mode, while traffic-related information is provided using the same audio guidance as in the normal guidance mode.

In an information acquisition system such as a car navigation system, a history accumulation DB 104 accumulates user's travel history. A condition determination section 107 determines a condition for retrieval for performing accurate prediction, and a prediction section 108 predicts a travel destination using the condition for retrieval. An information-to-be-presented determination section 110 acquires information relating to the travel destination predicted by the prediction section 108 from a received information DB 802 or the like.

An on-vehicle camera calibration apparatus includes: an on-vehicle camera; a camera parameter calculation unit configured to calculate camera parameters from a characteristic amount of a road surface sign photographed by the on-vehicle camera and recognized by an image processing and to output the camera parameters, wherein the camera parameters include an installation height and installation angle of the on-vehicle camera in photographing; and a camera parameter calibration unit configured to perform optical axis calibration control of the on-vehicle camera by the camera parameters output from the camera parameter calculation unit.

The present invention provides, in a car navigation system, a unit of notifying a user of the update contents of map data prior to the downloading of the map data. A vehicle-mounted terminal sets a difference update area in accordance with a selection made by a user and sends a difference update request to a map updating server. If an update mode in this case is “update after outline display”, the vehicle-mounted terminal downloads an outline update map from the map updating server. The outline update map is displayed on a display unit of a display. Here, when a download start button displayed on the display unit is depressed, the vehicle-mounted terminal downloads a detailed update map from the map updating server. The detailed update map is then displayed on the display unit of the display. Furthermore, an updating process is performed on the map data stored in a terminal DB.

A device for inputting voice commands into a system such as a car navigation system includes a microphone for inputting voice commands, a display panel for displaying a help frame when required, a memory for storing a list of the voice commands and their respective usage frequencies in the past, and a controller for controlling operation of an entire system. A user confirms a voice command before inputting it, referring to a command list displayed on the display panel as a help frame. The command list shows all of the voice commands in a reverse order of their usage frequencies in the past. The commands which have not been frequently used and are not familiar to the user are shown in an earlier part of the list. Therefore, the commands for which confirmation are necessary can be quickly found in the list. Those commands which have been used in excess of a predetermined frequency level in the past may be eliminated from the list.

A music delivery system enables a user to listen to desired music at low cost anywhere and any time. It has a server including a music data storage for storing music data uploaded from a personal computer, and a processor for generating a speech-based interactive document describing an interactive procedure with a car navigation system in accordance with information in the music data uploaded from the personal computer. In response to a download request from the car navigation system, the server transmits the speech-based interactive document generated by the processor to the car navigation system. The car navigation system retrieves and downloads desired music data from the music data storage of the server through interaction with the server in accordance with the speech-based interactive document received from the server.

In order to enable a driver to obtain traffic jam information or to listen to navigation guidance voice from a car navigation system without interrupting reproducing of music when a passenger enjoys music reproduced by a CD player and the like through cabin loudspeakers, the present invention provides car audio equipment in which a pair of loudspeakers is disposed on both sides of a headrest of a driver seat. The equipment processes at a decoder thereof a sound signal from a radio tuner, a car navigation device, a mobile phone and the like selected by a selector using a change-over switch, and the sound signal is reproduced through the loudspeakers.

To ensure that of all information transmitted through broadcast communications, only the information corresponding to the traveling route of a mobile body will be efficiently displayed at the information terminal of a car navigation system or the like, the information terminal is provided with: a means for receiving the spot or area information being transmitted, and receiving information that has been linked to the spot or area information being transmitted, a means for judging whether the spot or area information that has been received above is included in part of the spot or area information corresponding to the traveling route of the mobile body, and storage media for retaining the received spot or area information that the above-mentioned judgment means has judged to be included in the spot or area information corresponding to the traveling route of the mobile body.

A method and device is for displaying driving instructions. The aim is to achieve a better consistency between the image recorded of the surrounding terrain by the vehicle camera and presented in the driver's field of vision, and the keyed-in calculated driving instruction. For this purpose, the inclination of the vehicle about its longitudinal axis and lateral axis relative to the road surface as well as the incline of the road or the three-dimensionality of the terrain are taken into consideration when a keyed-in driving instruction from the angle of view of the driver is produced.

Road map data includes node data indicating a branch point, a junction point, or an intersection point and link data indicating a road between the preceding points. The node data and link data include distances, kinds of the roads, costs based on easiness of traveling. In a route search, a route is selected so that a total cost included in traveling on the route to a destination can be minimum. When command is generated as giving priority to an automatic travel road, costs included in the node and link data that correspond to the automatic travel road are lowered. A route including the automatic travel road is thereby selected in preference to other routes.