Method of Operating a Navigation System to Provide Route Guidance

• US 20110184639A1
• Filed: 01/27/2010
• Published: 07/28/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 01/27/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: HERE Global B.V. (Nokia Corporation)
• Original Assignee: HERE Global B.V. (Nokia Corporation)
• Inventors: Holsinger, David J.
• Granted Patent: US 8,374,791 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 701/201
• CPC Class Codes: G01C 21/3629 Guidance using speech or audio output, e.g. text-to-speech text to speech systems per se G10L13/00
• CPC Class Codes: G01C 21/3644 Landmark guidance, e.g. using POIs or conspicuous other objects
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/211 Syntactic parsing, e.g. based on context-free grammar [CFG] or unification grammars
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/284 Lexical analysis, e.g. tokenisation or collocates
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/55 Rule-based translation
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 13/027 Concept to speech synthesisers; Generation of natural phrases from machine-based concepts generation of parameters for speech synthesis out of text G10L13/08
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/19 Grammatical context, e.g. disambiguation of the recognition hypotheses based on word sequence rules

Abstract

A method of operating a navigation system to provide a route guidance message for traveling a route is disclosed. A preferred name of a feature visible from a road segment is obtained in a native language from a geographic database associated with the navigation system. The parts-of-speech of the preferred name are identified and converted into a target language text providing the preferred name in a target language. A guidance message includes the target language text in the target language.

Claims

1. A computer implemented method of operating a navigation system to provide a guidance message for traveling a route comprising at least one road segment, the method comprising:

obtaining data from a geographic database associated with the navigation system identifying a feature visible from the road segment;

obtaining preferred name data from the geographic database representing a preferred name of said feature visible from the road segment, wherein the preferred name provides a visual description of the feature in a native language;

identifying parts-of-speech components of the preferred name;

converting the parts-of-speech components of the preferred name into a target language text providing the preferred name in a target language, wherein the target language is different from the native language; and

providing the guidance message including the target language text.

2. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

matching the target language text to phonemes for the target language; and

providing the guidance message as speech.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein a parsing algorithm is used to identify the parts-of-speech components of the preferred name.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein the parts-of-speech components of the preferred name are indicated by data from the geographic database.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein the parts-of-speech components include a noun and an adjective.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein the preferred name includes a color of the feature.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein the preferred name includes a building material of the feature.

8. The method of claim 1 wherein the preferred name includes a shape of the feature.

9. The method of claim 1 wherein the guidance message is provided as the navigation system passes the feature.

10. The method of claim 1 wherein the guidance message is provided prior to an intersection.

11. A navigation system comprising:

a processor,

a geographic database associated with the processor,

a guidance application program executed on the processor to provide a guidance message for traveling a route, wherein the guidance application program obtains data from the geographic database identifying a feature visible from the route and a preferred name for the feature, wherein the preferred name is in a native language, wherein the guidance program identifies the parts-of-speech components of the preferred name, translates the parts-of-speech components of the preferred language into a target language and creates a target language text representing the preferred name in the target language.

12. The navigation system of claim 11 wherein the guidance application program matches the target language text to phonemes for the target language.

13. The navigation system of claim 11 wherein a parsing algorithm is used to identify the parts-of-speech components of the preferred name.

14. The navigation system of claim 11 wherein the parts-of-speech components of the preferred name are indicated by data from the geographic database.

15. The navigation system of claim 11 wherein the parts-of-speech components include a noun and an adjective.

16. The navigation system of claim 11 wherein the preferred name includes at least one visible descriptor selected from a group consisting of a color of the identified feature, a building material of the identified feature, a shape of the identified feature, an architectural style of the identified feature, and a decorative element of the identified feature.

17. A computer implemented method of operating a navigation system to provide a guidance message, the method comprising:

obtaining data from a geographic database associated with the navigation system to identify a preferred name of a visible feature, wherein the preferred name is in a first language;

identifying parts-of-speech components of the preferred name; and

translating the parts-of-speech components of the preferred name into a target language and arranging the translated components into a target language text to provide the preferred name of the feature in the target language, wherein the target language is different from the first language.

18. The method of claim 17 wherein the preferred name includes at least one visible descriptor selected from a group consisting of a color of the identified feature, a building material of the identified feature, a shape of the identified feature, an architectural style of the identified feature, and a decorative element of the identified feature.

19. The method of claim 17 wherein the wherein the parts-of-speech components of the preferred name are indicated by data from the geographic database.

20. The method of claim 17 wherein the preferred name includes at least an adjective and a noun for parts-of-speech components.