Apparatus for navigating vehicle
First Claim
1. An apparatus for navigating vehicle comprising:
- a conjecture means for conjecturing the current position of a vehicle by a dead-reckoning method on the basis of the vehicle travel direction and the vehicle travel distance;
a node storage means for storing road information in the form of the positions of a plurality of nodes provided on the roads concerned,a non-memory road judging means for making a judgment as to whether or not the road on which the vehicle is running is one which is stored in said storage means, anda target node specifying means for specifying, when the vehicle is judged by said non-memory road judging means to be traveling on a road which is not stored in said node storage means, a target node toward which the vehicle is running, comprising;
a first candidate node extracting means for extracting candidate nodes from said plurality of nodes stored in said node storage means;
a determining means for determining if the candidate nodes cannot be the target node by comparing the respective directions between a conjectured current position of the vehicle and these candidate nodes with the direction in which the vehicle is running; and
a first deleting means for deleting a candidate node which is determined not able to be the target node from the candidate nodes.
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Abstract
Disclosed is a navigation apparatus for showing a driver the current position of his vehicle by estimating the vehicle position on the basis of the travel direction and travel distance thereof and matching the current vehicle position thus estimated to map information stored previously. The apparatus disclosed is capable of navigating a vehicle with accuracy even if it is traveling on a road which is not stored in memory; in that case, the apparatus repeats comparison of the vehicle travel direction with the directions in which lie the current vehicle position and respective nodes stored in memory, and accumulates the comparison results so as to infer the arrival of the vehicle at its destination which corresponds to one of the nodes stored in memory.
194 Citations
14 Claims
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1. An apparatus for navigating vehicle comprising:
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a conjecture means for conjecturing the current position of a vehicle by a dead-reckoning method on the basis of the vehicle travel direction and the vehicle travel distance; a node storage means for storing road information in the form of the positions of a plurality of nodes provided on the roads concerned, a non-memory road judging means for making a judgment as to whether or not the road on which the vehicle is running is one which is stored in said storage means, and a target node specifying means for specifying, when the vehicle is judged by said non-memory road judging means to be traveling on a road which is not stored in said node storage means, a target node toward which the vehicle is running, comprising; a first candidate node extracting means for extracting candidate nodes from said plurality of nodes stored in said node storage means; a determining means for determining if the candidate nodes cannot be the target node by comparing the respective directions between a conjectured current position of the vehicle and these candidate nodes with the direction in which the vehicle is running; and a first deleting means for deleting a candidate node which is determined not able to be the target node from the candidate nodes. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14)
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4. An apparatus for navigating vehicle comprising:
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a conjecture means for conjecturing the current position of a vehicle by a dead-reckoning method on the basis of the vehicle travel direction and the vehicle travel distance; a node storage means for storing road information in the form of the positions of a plurality of nodes provided on the roads concerned; a non-memory road judging means for making a judgment as to whether or not the road on which the vehicle is running is one which is stored in said storage means; and a target node specifying means for specifying, when the vehicle is judged by said non-memory road judging means to be traveling on a road which is not stored in said node storage means, a target node toward which the vehicle is running, comprising; a candidate node extracting means for extracting candidate nodes from said plurality of nodes stored in said node storage means; an average travel direction storage means for storing the average travel direction value for each of the respective travel distance units covered, and an angle difference calculating means for calculating, when the vehicle is judged by said non-memory road judging means to be running on a non-memory road, the average value, for each of the candidate nodes, of the angle difference between the data on the directions of the respective connections between the current vehicle position and the candidate nodes and the data on a plurality of stored average travel direction values for the respective travel distance units; and a deleting means for deleting those nodes which involve an angle difference exceeding a first predetermined value from the candidate nodes. - View Dependent Claims (5)
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Specification