Traffic Information System and Method

• US 20130335237A1
• Filed: 03/02/2011
• Published: 12/19/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 03/02/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Mobile Devices Ingenierie
• Original Assignee: Mobile Devices Ingenierie
• Inventors: Zarka, Julien, Quintana, Aude, Tran, Jean-Jacques, Gallet De Saint-Aurin, Romain
• Granted Patent: US 9,019,126 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 340/905
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/0967 Systems involving transmission of highway information, e.g. weather, speed limits transmission of navigation instructions to the vehicle G08G1/0968
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/096716 where the received information does not generate an automatic action on the vehicle control
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/096741 where the source of the transmitted information selects which information to transmit to each vehicle
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/096775 where the origin of the information is a central station

Abstract

Method and system of traffic information comprising a mobile device (1) connected to a connected host server (2) via a wireless network (4), wherein said host server (2) is adapted to download updated standard traffic information xml files (6) from traffic information server (3) connected to the Internet (5), wherein the method comprises the steps of identifying the current GPS location of the mobile device and transmitting said current GPS location to the host server, defining a relevant area surrounding said current GPS location of the mobile device, extracting, from updated standard traffic information xml files, road segments totally or partially included in said relevant area, preparing and compressing a relevant subset of traffic info data, transmitting it to the mobile device, processing said subset of traffic info data in the mobile device to display traffic information.

Claims

1. Traffic information system, comprising:

at least a mobile device having a localization function adapted to determine a current location thereof, said mobile device being adapted at least to display a navigation route,

a host server connected to Internet,

at least a traffic information server, connected to Internet, adapted to provide updated standard traffic information files, said updated standard traffic information files comprising traffic information relative to a large territory,

a communication channel between the mobile device and the host server, including a wireless portion,

wherein the mobile device transmits said current location to the host server at least from time to time,

wherein the host server is adapted to get updated standard traffic information files from the traffic information server, at least from time to time,

characterized in that the host server extracts and filters data contained in the updated standard traffic information files according at least to said current location, to result in a subset of traffic information data, which is transmitted to the mobile device, wherein the subset of traffic info data is further compressed in a binary compressed form.

2. Traffic information system according to claim 1, wherein the host server comprises a re-arranged file and a buffer file, the latter receiving the downloading of the updated file from the traffic information server, said re-arranged file being the result of a sorting operation on the buffer file, and subset of traffic information data being processed from said re-arranged file.

3. Traffic information system according to claim 2, wherein said re-arranged file is partitioned in a plurality of different portions, each portion comprising the data of a particular geographic zone.

4. Traffic information system according to claim 2, wherein said updated standard traffic information files comprises a table of road segment identifiers, each road segment identifier representing a road segment and having a set of traffic condition variables, each road segment having a bounding box defined in said re-arranged file.

5. Traffic information system according to claim 1, wherein the subset of traffic information data comprises data relative to a corridor of the planned route.

6. Traffic information system according to claim 1, wherein the subset of traffic info data comprises data according to the zoom level currently displayed on the navigation device, said data comprising only traffic information of the road segments displayed at the current zoom level.

7. Traffic information system according to claim 1, wherein the subset of traffic information data has a size equal to or slightly below the internet standard Maximum Transmission Unit ‘

MTU’

.

8. Traffic information system according to claim 1, wherein the subset of traffic info data has a size which is less than 1% of the size of updated standard traffic information files.

9. Method of handling traffic information in a traffic information system comprising a mobile device connected to a connected host server via a wireless network, wherein said host server is adapted to download updated standard traffic information files from a traffic information server connected to the Internet, wherein the method comprises the steps of:

identifying a current location of the mobile device,

transmitting said current location from the mobile device to the host server,

defining, in the host server, a relevant area surrounding said current location of the mobile device,

extracting, from updated standard traffic information files, road segments totally or partially included in said relevant area,

preparing and compressing a relevant subset of traffic info data,

transmitting said subset of traffic info data from the host server to the mobile device,

processing said subset of traffic info data in the mobile device to at least display traffic information.

10. Method of handling traffic information according to claim 9, further comprising the step of:

identifying traffic information data relative the corridor of the planned route to be included in the relevant area comprised in the subset of traffic info data.

11. Method of handling traffic information according to claim 9, further comprising the initial step of:

preparing a geographically partitioned re-arranged file comprising different portions, each portion comprising the data of a particular geographic zone.

12. Method of handling traffic information according to claim 9, wherein said updated standard traffic information files comprises a table of road segment identifiers, each road segment identifier representing a road segment and having a set of traffic condition varibles, in particular a traffic status value further comprising the step of:

road segment identifiers are grouped by type of traffic status value, with a sub-list for each traffic status value.

13. Method of handling traffic information according to claim 12, wherein the sub-list having the largest size is omitted in the transmission from the host server to the mobile device, and wherein the mobile device affects the non transmitted road segment identifiers with the missing value.

14. Method of handling traffic information according to claim 12, wherein said sub-list is optimized by one or several of the following steps:

a set of road segment identifiers with consecutives values is indicated by the value of the first road segment identifier of said set and a number indicating the number of consecutive road segment identifiers following the first one,

re-indexing the road segment identifier sub-list to suppress the gaps greater than a predetermined value between two subsequent road segment identifiers,

a set of non consecutive road segment identifiers is indicated by the value of the first road segment identifier and other road segment identifiers are indicated by differential values separating each of said other road segment identifiers are indicated by differential values separating each of said other road segment identifiers and the preceding road segment identifier,

changing road segment identifiers absolute values into binary form.

15. Method of handling traffic information according to claim 9, wherein the navigation device uses a zoom level to display current navigation map, further comprising the step of:

eliminating traffic information relative to the road segments which do not show at said current zoom level.