Travel information collection apparatus

• US 8,666,593 B2
• Filed: 04/22/2008
• Issued: 03/04/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 04/25/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: DENSO Corporation
• Original Assignee: DENSO Corporation
• Inventors: Yamada, Kazunao
• Primary Examiner(s): Dager, Jonathan M
• Application Number:
  US12/148,805
• Publication Number:
  US 20080269985A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,142 Days
• Field of Search: 340988-996
• US Class Current: 701/36
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/0104 Measuring and analyzing of parameters relative to traffic conditions

Abstract

Travel information is categorized into plural time slot categories according to information characteristics of traffic flow information that represents a traffic flow of each of road sections in a database of an information center, and a learn database is built for each of the categories derived from above categorization. The travel information collected by a travel of a self vehicle along the road sections is learned according to the categories of the learn database for accurately managing the travel information according to the characteristics of the traffic flow.

Claims

1. A travel information collection apparatus equipped in a self vehicle, the apparatus comprising:

a position detector configured to determine a current position of the self vehicle and a traveling road section;

a storage control unit configured to store, in a storage unit, travel information of only the self vehicle collected for each of road sections along a travel of the self vehicle; and

a database building unit configured to build a learn database of the travel information of only the self vehicle, the learn database having a plurality of time slot categories according to characteristics of traffic information acquired from a traffic information database of an information center that is external to the self vehicle, the characteristics of the traffic information being representative of traffic flow of a specific road section,

the storage control unit is configured to provide the travel information of only the self vehicle to the database building unit according to the plurality of time slot categories of the learn database.

2. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein

the travel information includes at least one of a vehicle speed, a power consumption, a fuel consumption amount, shift lever position information, acceleration opening information, an engine rotation number, a brake operation number, a road inclination, and a road curvature.

3. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein

the database building unit is configured to categorize the learn database by using days of a week and holidays.

4. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein

the information center is configured to generate categorized information having a plurality of time slot categories according to the traffic information characteristics in the traffic information database, and

the database building unit builds the learn database according to the categorized information after acquiring the categorized information from the information center.

5. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein

the storage control unit is configured to store a number of learning operations of the travel information to the storage unit,

the storage control unit is configured to calculate averaged travel information based on collected travel information and past travel information stored in the storage unit by using the number of learning operation, and

the storage control unit is configured to control the averaged travel information to be learned as new travel information according to the categories of the learn database.

6. The apparatus of claim 5 further comprising:

a statistical reliability storage unit configured to store, to the storage unit, collected travel information in association with statistical reliability after determining the statistical reliability that represents a scatter of the collected travel information from a predetermined standard.

7. The apparatus of claim 6, wherein

the statistical reliability storage unit is configured to calculate an averaged value of the statistical reliability by using the number of learning operations based on the statistical reliability of the collected travel information and past travel information stored in the storage unit, and

the statistical reliability storage unit is configured to store the averaged value of the statistical reliability as new statistical reliability to the storage unit.

8. The apparatus of claim 1 further comprising:

a position reliability storage unit is configured to store, to the storage unit, position reliability in association with the collected travel information after determining the position reliability that represents an accuracy of the current position of the self vehicle.

9. The apparatus of claim 8, wherein

the position reliability storage unit is configured to calculate an average value of the position reliability by using the number of learning operation based on the position reliability of the collected travel information and past travel information stored in the storage unit, and

the position reliability storage unit is configured to store, to the storage unit, the average value of the position reliability as new position reliability.

12. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the information center external to the self vehicle is configured to receive travel information of at least one of the road sections from a plurality of probe cars, and performs statistic processing on the travel information provided by the probe cars to generate the characteristics of traffic information that represents the traffic flow of the at least one of the road sections.

10. A method for learning travel information of a self vehicle, the method comprising:

determining a current position of the self vehicle and a traveling road section;

storing, to a storage unit, travel information of only the self vehicle collected for each of road sections along a travel of the self vehicle;

acquiring a base classification of traffic information from a traffic information database from an external information center that is arranged to provide characteristic information of traffic flow of each of the road sections in correlation with a plurality of time slot categories;

building a database, using a database building unit equipped in the self vehicle, the database having the plurality of time slots categories according to the base classification of traffic information with the collected travel information; and

controlling the collected travel information of only the self vehicle to be learned according to categorization of the learn database.

11. A travel information collection apparatus equipped in a self vehicle, the apparatus comprising:

a position detector configured to determine a current position of the self vehicle and a traveling road section;

a database building unit configured to build a learn database having a plurality of time slot categories according to a classification of travel information from a travel information database of an external information center, the classification of travel information represents a traffic flow of a traveling road section, the database building unit is configured to first store the classification of travel information from the information center, and build the learn database according to the classification of travel information with travel information of only the self vehicle; and

a storage control unit configured to store, in a storage unit, the travel information of only the self vehicle collected for each of road sections along a travel of the self vehicle, the storage control unit is configured to provide the database building unit with the travel information according to the classification of travel information of the learn database.