Automobile navigation apparatus

• US 7,590,486 B2
• Filed: 01/31/2005
• Issued: 09/15/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 01/29/2004
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Clarion Co., Ltd. (Faurecia SA)
• Original Assignee: Xanavi Informatics Corporation (Hitachi, Ltd.)
• Inventors: Okude, Mariko, Atarashi, Yoshitaka, Matsuo, Shigeru, Machii, Kimiyoshi
• Primary Examiner(s): Black; Thomas G
• Assistant Examiner(s): Kong; Sze-Hon
• Application Number:
  US11/045,067
• Publication Number:
  US 20060080030A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,688 Days
• Field of Search: 340/995.12
• US Class Current: 701/208
• CPC Class Codes: G01C 21/3889 Transmission of selected map data, e.g. depending on route
• CPC Class Codes: G09B 29/106 using electronic means

Abstract

An automobile navigation apparatus, that has a rewritable recording medium and capability to updates the map data base by obtaining latest map data, records the map data in the recording means and comprises updating data acquisition means that acquires updated data of a map to which updating procedure is added, an information interpreting means that interprets the updating procedure information, and a map data updating means that searches over said map data base and updates said map data base on the basis of the results of such interpretation and manages the map data by using attributions that indicates additional information of the map elements which are composed into a table as the records thereof so that the row record of the table is classified by the attribution which indicates the additional information of the map element.

Claims

1. An automobile navigation apparatus comprising;

a map data base storing map data in a rewritable memory medium,

a map data management unit that classifies said map data into attributions of information properties characterized by said map data and composes tables including said attributions which are specified in records thereof and enables access to said map data in a unit of said records,

an updating data acquisition unit that transmits a request to update the map data and that acquires updated data of a map that includes updating procedure information transmitted in response to the request,

an information interpreting unit that interprets the updating procedure information, and that compiles the updating actions in the updating procedure information into commands that direct the automobile navigation apparatus to update the each specified map element in the updating procedure information; and

a map data updating unit that searches over said map data base based on a result of the interpretation,

wherein said acquired updating procedure information includes;

updating conditions for specifying map elements to be updated,

updating actions that describe updating commands to be performed by the automobile navigation apparatus to update the map data, wherein the commands include one or more of deleting, adding and modifying content, and

an order for performing the updating commands.

2. An automobile navigation apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising an input unit that inputs user subjective information, wherein

said update data acquisition unit acquires map data which is to be updated in accordance with said user subjective information input by said input unit, and

said map data updating unit updates said map data base after selecting acquired map data under a predetermined condition.

3. An automobile navigation apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising an updating recapitulation recording unit that records updating recapitulation information to correspond to area information and location information of map elements to be updated.

6. An automobile navigation apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the map data management unit composes separate tables for frequently updated facility data and for less frequently updated facility data to change index updating timing and to avoid a long retrieval waiting time.

4. Server equipment comprising;

a map data base which records evaluation values computed by a predetermined set or plural sets of user subjective information in map data corresponding to map elements, and a communication unit for transmitting/receiving data to/from a terminal device, wherein

said server equipment receives user subjective information and transmits map data, which is obtained by searching over the map data base under a retrieval condition to which said received user subjective information is set, to a terminal device with appending data updating procedure information,

wherein said appending data updating procedure information includes updating conditions that specify map elements to be updated, and commands specifying operations for updating the specified map elements.

5. Server equipment comprising;

a map data base which records evaluation values computed by a predetermined set or plural sets of user subjective information in map data corresponding to map elements, and a communication unit for transmitting/receiving data to/from a terminal device, wherein

said server equipment receives evaluation values and transmits map data, which is obtained by searching over the map data base under a retrieval condition to which said received evaluation values are set, to a terminal device with appending data updating procedure information,

wherein said appending data updating procedure information includes updating conditions for specifying map elements to be updated, and commands specifying operations for updating the specified map elements.