Navigation equipment for a moving vehicle

• US 4,819,175 A
• Filed: 09/18/1987
• Issued: 04/04/1989
• Est. Priority Date: 09/25/1986
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Siemens AG
• Original Assignee: Siemens AG
• Inventors: Wuttke, Gero
• Primary Examiner(s): Chin, Gary
• Application Number:
  US07/098,087
• Time in Patent Office: 564 Days
• Field of Search: 364/424, 364/443, 364/444, 364/449, 364/571, 364/450, 364/457, 340/988, 340/990, 340/995, 73/178 R
• US Class Current: 701/208
• CPC Class Codes: G01C 21/30 Map- or contour-matching
• CPC Class Codes: G09B 29/106 using electronic means

Abstract

A navigation equipment for a moving vehicle which includes a magnetic field probe 1 and a travel distance meter 2 which supplies position values Xa, Ya using dead-reckoning navigation which can be checked with a street map. The street map is digitally represented in a plat memory 4 using a network 42 which has meshes comprising network elements 421. The network elements 421 uses a binary 1 which represents a street and in other positions utilize a binary 0. The addresses of the network elements 421 in the plat memory 4 are ordered according to an x-y coordinate system and are addressable with the position coordinates Xa and Ya. The correction stage 5 checks a position indication Xa, Ya for a street value 1 or a 0 (deviant value) and when k successive deviant values occur, they are successively shifted in direction until street values result. The resulting shift values are then added as a correction value to every position indication Xa, Ya afterwards.

Claims

1. Navigation equipment for a vehicle comprising, a magnetic field probe (1) for obtaining measured values for the direction of travel, a travel distance meter (2) for obtaining measured values for the distance travelled, a plat memory (4) in which it stores a digitized street may (41) of a region in a coordinate system, a logic means (3) which receives the outputs of said magnetic field probe and of said travel distance meter and calculates position indications of the vehicle referred to the coordinate system, and storing said indications in a position memory (52), a correction stage (5) connected to said plat memory (4) and said position memory (52) and checks every n^th position indication and when said n^th position indication does not lie on a street of the street map (41), said correction stage corrects said n^th position indication to form a position value (X, Y) which corresponds to a point on a neighboring street, said street map (41) of the region is divided into a network (42) composed of network elements (421) of identical size;

every network element (421) has an address in the plat memory (4) allocated to it, one of two binary characters being stored under said address, whereby one binary character identifies a positive network element (421) which lies mainly on a street and the other binary character identifies a negative network element which does not lie mainly on a street;

said correction stage (5) includes an error memory (51) which contains the respectively m most recent position indications of the checked position indications which fall on a negative network element (421) which has said one binary character that indicates that the vehicle is not on a street;

the position indications from the error memory (51) are successively shifted with a shift value until a correction value is found, so that the position indications shifted therewith fall on a network element (421) which lies mainly on a street and the position indications stored in the error memory (51) are subsequently erased; and

every position indication is corrected by the correction value and the result is output as said position value.

2. Navigation equipment according to claim 1, wherein the street map (41) of the region is subdivided into network parts;

and wherein the neighboring network parts overlap at their edges.

3. Navigation equipment according to claim 1 or 2, wherein the network elements (421) are quadratic areas.

4. Navigation equipment according to claim 1, wherein the error memory (51) is a shift register and is limited to m deviant values.

5. Navigation equipment according to claim 1, wherein every shift value is a whole multiple of an edge length K of a network element (421).