Method and apparatus for route-selective reproduction of broadcast traffic announcements
First Claim
1. In a traffic information system including a transmitter and at least one vehicle-mounted receiver equipped with a digital data decoder (10) and a memory (16), a method for route-selective reproduction of digitally encoded traffic announcements broadcast by said transmitter,comprising the steps ofstoring in said memory (16) data characteristic of a route of travel intended by a vehicle driver, including storing a travel direction and at least one of a point of origin and a specific initial road designation;
- decoding traffic announcements forming part of a signal received from said transmitter and identifying specific route designations contained in each announcement;
comparing said specific route designations with said stored intended route;
andselectively communicating to said driver, by at least one of an audio indication and a visual indication, any announcement which contains a route designation which matches, to a predetermined extent, said stored intended route.
1 Assignment
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
In a method for route-selective reproduction of digitally encoded traffic annoucements broadcast by a transmitter to a vehicle receiver, the announcements being decoded in a decoder of the receiver, a comparison of route-specific characteristics with characteristics of the trip route is performed. If the characteristics agree to a predetermined extent, the driver is provided with the traffic announcement applicable to him, via a visual and/or acoustical output device. In a feature of this method, the road types and their numerical designations are used as the route-specific characteristics. In a further feature of this provision, major route segments and shorter route segments may also serve as route-specific characteristics. By means of a trip segment transducer, the distance already covered can also be ascertained, so that only traffic announcements pertaining to obstructions in regions of the route that are still to be covered are transmitted. By additionally evaluating the driving speed, traffic announcements pertaining to very distant obstructions that can be expected to have been eliminated by the time that segment is reached can also be suppressed. The advantage of these provisions is that the driver is not distracted by a great number of traffic advisories that are not relevant for him.
219 Citations
18 Claims
-
1. In a traffic information system including a transmitter and at least one vehicle-mounted receiver equipped with a digital data decoder (10) and a memory (16), a method for route-selective reproduction of digitally encoded traffic announcements broadcast by said transmitter,
comprising the steps of storing in said memory (16) data characteristic of a route of travel intended by a vehicle driver, including storing a travel direction and at least one of a point of origin and a specific initial road designation; -
decoding traffic announcements forming part of a signal received from said transmitter and identifying specific route designations contained in each announcement; comparing said specific route designations with said stored intended route; and selectively communicating to said driver, by at least one of an audio indication and a visual indication, any announcement which contains a route designation which matches, to a predetermined extent, said stored intended route. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9)
-
-
5. In a traffic information system including a transmitter and at least one vehicle-mounted receiver equipped with a digital data decoder (10) and a memory (16), a method for route-selective reproduction of digitally encoded traffic announcements broadcast by said transmitter, comprising the steps of
storing in said memory (16) data characteristic of a route of travel intended by a vehicle driver including storing a point of origin and a point of destination and automatically selecting, according to predetermined criteria, a route connecting said points from a database of available route segments; -
decoding traffic announcements forming part of a signal received from said transmitter and identifying specific route designations contained in each announcement; comparing said specific route designations with said stored intended route; and selectively communicating to said driver, by at least one of an audio indication and a visual indication, any announcement which contains a route designation which matches, to a predetermined extent, said stored intended route. - View Dependent Claims (7)
-
-
10. A vehicular radio receiver having
a tuner stage (62); -
a decoder (10) connected to an output of said tuner stage, decoding digitally encoded received traffic announcements, a memory device (16) storing route-specific characteristics of a plurality of route segments; an input device (14), connected to an input of said memory, for storing in said memory characteristics of a route of travel intended by a vehicle operator; a control circuit (20), connected to respective outputs of said decoder (10) and of said memory (16), and including a comparator (18) comparing route-specific characteristics of the decoded traffic announcements with characteristics of the intended route of travel, and an output device (12) providing at least one of a visual and an acoustical indication of traffic announcements to said vehicle operator; a gate circuit (26) between an output of the decoder (10) and an input of the output device (12), connected to an output of said control circuit (20) and applying a traffic announcement from said decoder to said output device only when said control circuit (20) has determined that route-specific characteristics of the announcement match route-specific characteristics of said intended route. - View Dependent Claims (11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18)
-
Specification