WO2009094974A1

WO2009094974A1 - Method for the operation of a navigation device

Info

Publication number: WO2009094974A1
Application number: PCT/DE2009/000007
Authority: WO
Inventors: Aida-Virginia Gasparel
Original assignee: Navigon Ag
Priority date: 2008-01-28
Filing date: 2009-01-08
Publication date: 2009-08-06
Also published as: DE102008006445A1

Abstract

The invention relates to a method for the operation of a navigation device, the navigation device having: an input device via which operator commands and/or location data, particularly starting points and/or destination points, can be inputted; a signal-receiving device for receiving position signals, particularly GPS signals; a position detection device which determines the current position from the position signals; a road network database which contains information about road sections (coverage sections 03) in which the position signals are of insufficient quality for determining the position; a route calculating device for calculating a planned route (01) with respect to the location data and the road network database, wherein the route leads from the starting point to the destination point; a maneuver output module which can produce and output acoustic and/or graphical maneuver instructions, wherein coverage sections (03) lying on the route are identified, wherein before the vehicle enters the coverage section (03), an acoustic and/or graphical coverage maneuver instruction (s) is produced and output, and wherein the coverage maneuver instruction (s) contains at least one instruction (i, a) for the user that allows the route (01) to be followed in the coverage section (03) and/or directly after the coverage section (03).

Description

Method for operating a navigation device

The invention relates to a method for operating a navigation device according to the preamble of claim 1.

Generic navigation devices are used, for example, as mobile or permanently installed devices, in particular in motor vehicles, in order to guide the driver along a route from a starting point to a destination point. Via an input device, the user can enter operator commands and location inputs and thus enter into communication with the device. By receiving position signals output from positioning satellites, such as GPS signals, a signal receiving unit of the navigation device, in cooperation with a position determining unit, can determine the position of the navigation device. Based on the data of a route network database, the planned route can also be determined by means of a route calculation unit and used as a basis for the route guidance process. The path network database also contains information about those sections of the route in which the quality of the position signals is known to be insufficient for determining the position. These may in particular be tunnel sections or sections of road in deep street canyons, which due to their topography Such a strong shadowing of the satellite signals cause a position determination is no longer possible. Such implicitly or explicitly marked sections with insufficient quality of the position signals are to be referred to below as cover sections.

Further, known navigation devices include a route calculation unit for calculating a planned route taking into account the location information and the route network databases, the route leading from the starting point to the destination point. The starting point is often the user's current point of view.

To safely guide the user of the navigation device along the route, there is also a maneuver output module that generates and outputs audible and / or graphical maneuvering instructions. The maneuver instructions include instructions for the user to perform the maneuvers necessary to follow the route.

The above-mentioned coverage sections with insufficient quality of the position signals naturally lead to problems in the route guidance process, since the position along the coverage sections can not be determined exactly by satellite positioning. The navigation device is thus "blind" so to speak along the cover sections, which leads to problems in particular with regard to the output of the maneuvering instructions by the maneuvering output module, since the maneuvering instructions must be output as exactly as possible in temporal or spatial relation to the respective maneuvers, since one early maneuvering or maneuvering is no longer possible If, for example, maneuvering instructions are to be output in a tunnel, then the correct positioning of the maneuvering instructions along the route through the tunnel takes place is a major problem, since the position of the vehicle can not be determined in a conventional manner by evaluating the position signals. To solve this problem, two approaches are already known from the prior art. According to the first approach, the signals of other sensors, such as the acceleration and speed sensor, the vehicle are evaluated in order to determine the position of the vehicle due to this additional signal evaluation and independent of the satellite position signals. However, this approach has the disadvantage that a correspondingly expensive additional sensors must be installed.

According to the second approach, the speed of the vehicle is determined on entering the cover section. Under the

The premise that the vehicle does not change its speed along its passage through the cover section, for example through a tunnel, can then be interpolated from the travel time since entering the cover section, the position of the vehicle. However, this method is extremely faulty, since it can very easily deviate from the speed at the entrance to the cover section, especially for longer cover sections. If, for example, there is a traffic jam in a tunnel and the vehicle has to be braked accordingly, the driver will receive nonsensical maneuvering instructions that confuse him accordingly due to the incorrect location determination.

Based on this prior art, it is therefore an object of the present invention to propose a new method for operating a navigation device, with which the output of maneuver instructions in the area of cover sections can be improved.

This object is achieved by a method according to the teaching of claim 1.

The inventive method is based on the fundamental idea that the problem of the lack of determinability of the position of the vehicle in cover sections in the vast majority of cases already in Apron is known. In other words, even before entering a cover section, it can already be predicted that the maneuvering instructions can not be output with the sufficient reliability in a timely manner or in place, without the evaluation of an additional sensor system. According to the invention, therefore, the cover sections lying on the route are already identified prior to entering such a cover section. The identification of coverage sections can be carried out, for example, by filtering out all route sections with a corresponding attribute from the route section sequence forming the route. The attributes may be special coverage attributes that explicitly identify the coverage property of the link. Alternatively, they can also be attributes with implicit labeling of the coverage properties, since, for example, a tunnel attribute implicitly states that sufficient quality of the satellite position signals will not be available along the corresponding route section. Also, in the map database, information about building heights, especially in the context of 3D building models, implicitly indicates cover sections with cover properties.

If a coverage portion has been identified along the route, a special coverage maneuver instruction for that coverage portion is generated and output in a graphical or audible manner. In accordance with the invention, the output of the cover maneuvering instruction already takes place before entering the cover section. Because before entering the cover section, a position determination is still possible, so that the cover maneuvering instruction can be positioned according to specific predetermined parameters exactly temporally or locally. The cover maneuvering instruction contains at least one instruction for the user in order to be able to follow the route in the cover section and / or shortly after the cover section. This means with In other words, by the cover maneuvering instruction, maneuvers are displayed to the user even before entering the cover portion, which he then has to perform while passing through the cover portion. Alternatively or in addition thereto, the cover maneuvering instruction can also describe maneuvers which need to be executed shortly after leaving the cover section, since the correct position determination after leaving a cover section is regularly subject to a certain delay time. For example, a cover maneuver could be: "At 100 meters enter a tunnel, in the tunnel follow the right lane after 500 meters and turn right immediately after exiting the tunnel."

As a result, the user thus receives all the information he needs to perform the maneuvers in the cover section or shortly after leaving the cover section by means of the method according to the invention before entering the cover section. Correct position determination in the cover section for exact positioning of the maneuver instructions to be output in the cover section can therefore be dispensed with by application of the method according to the invention.

The number of maneuvers described by the cover maneuvering instruction is basically arbitrary. However, in order to inform the user as fully as possible about the maneuvers to be performed along the cover portion, the cover maneuvering instruction should preferably include all instructions for the user necessary to follow the route in the cover portion and / or shortly after the cover portion.

Insofar as the cover maneuvering instruction consists of a plurality of individual maneuvering instructions, each relating to individual maneuvers in the cover section or shortly after the cover section, these individual maneuvering instructions should preferably be acoustically and / or graphically combined with each other. For example, corresponding instruction sets may be acoustically combined to increase intelligibility for the user.

The method according to the invention is based on a main aspect in that the cover maneuvering instruction is issued before entering the cover section. From this, there may arise the problem that the cover maneuvering instruction collides with a regular maneuvering instruction of the route guidance process which is also to be issued immediately before entering the cover section. To alleviate or solve this problem, the time interval between the issuance of the maneuver instruction for the last maneuver before the cover section (hereinafter referred to as the last regular maneuver instruction) and the output of the cover maneuver instruction may be determined in advance by appropriate analysis methods. This time interval is then compared with a predetermined threshold value, and if the threshold value is undershot, the last regular maneuvering instruction and the cover maneuver instruction are acoustically and / or graphically combined or parts of the regular maneuver instruction and / or parts of the cover maneuver instruction suppressed. In this way, unduly large overlaps between the regular maneuvering instruction and the covering maneuvering instruction can be avoided.

As already described, there is the problem of covering the satellite position signals, especially in tunnels. Tunnel sections are usually identified in digital path network databases with a tunnel attribute, so that sections with tunnel attribute can preferably be identified automatically as coverage sections.

In the basic variant of the method according to the invention, the cover maneuvering instruction can simply consist of the combination of different maneuvering instructions for describing individual maneuvers along the cover section. However, this can be confusing User, since the cover maneuvering instruction according to the invention is always issued before entering a cover section and not as usual in a specific temporal or local relation to the corresponding maneuver. In order to avoid any misunderstanding by this different way of positioning the cover maneuver instruction relative to the maneuvers to be performed, it is particularly advantageous if the cover maneuver instruction contains corresponding user hints. This additional user indication may indicate the reason of the issuance of the cover maneuvering instruction to alert the user to the circumstance that the instructions contained in the cover maneuvering instruction are to be executed only within the cover portion. Alternatively or in addition thereto, the user information can also contain an indication of the type of cover section, for example on a tunnel.

If the cover maneuvering instruction contains a plurality of individual maneuvering instructions for describing a plurality of individual maneuvers along the cover section, then this can be a high amount of information, which in the short term the user can not often capture at one go. In addition, there is the problem that, due to the issuance of the cover maneuvering instruction, even before entering the cover section, there is often a large time interval between the first output of the cover maneuvering instruction and the time for performing the actual maneuver in the cover section. In order to solve this problem as a whole, the cover maneuver instruction after the first output in the area before the entrance to the cover section can also be repeated below. In this way, the information of the cover maneuvering instruction can be repeatedly announced to the user, and depending on the location in the cover section, he can then extract the corresponding information from the cover maneuvering instruction. With regard to the repetition of the cover maneuvering instruction, it is proposed according to a first method variant that the repetition of the cover maneuvering instruction takes place only after the input of an associated operator command. This means in other words that the user triggers the repetition of the cover maneuver instruction by the appropriate input.

As an alternative to the user-defined repetition of the cover maneuver instruction, the cover maneuver instruction can also be repeated automatically, in particular at regular time intervals.

If the cover maneuver instruction is repeated automatically, it is necessary to determine the timing at which the repetition of the cover maneuver instruction is again stopped. According to a preferred variant of the method, the position determination of the position determination unit is used for this purpose. Once the position detecting unit has detected the leaving of the cover portion by corresponding position determination, the repetition of the cover maneuvering instruction can be stopped. After leaving the cover section, in turn, a sufficient quality of the position signals is available, so that the maneuvering instructions in turn can be positioned relative to the associated maneuvers on the basis of the corresponding position determination.

In order for the repetition of the cover maneuvering instruction not to be perceived as annoying by the user, the repetition should in each case contain only the absolutely necessary information. However, in particular, the output of the additional user advice informing the user of the reason for issuing the cover maneuvering instruction and / or the kind of the cover section is of interest to the user only once, since this information will be used for the further course of the route Maneuver has no meaning. It is therefore particularly advantageous if this additional User instruction is suppressed in the repetition of the cover maneuvering instruction.

If the cover maneuvering instruction also contains maneuvering instructions for maneuvers to be carried out shortly after the cover section, the problem arises that the satellite position determination is already possible again, even though the maneuvering instruction for the maneuver contained in the cover maneuvering instruction has already been issued several times shortly after the cover section. In these cases, it is nevertheless advantageous if the corresponding maneuvering instruction for the maneuver is output again shortly after the cover section as a function of the satellite position determination, but only if the corresponding maneuver has not yet been carried out.

In contrast to the acoustic output of the cover maneuvering instructions, the graphical maneuvers of the cover maneuvering instruction should each be graphically displayed separately. For example, the individual maneuvers belonging to the cover maneuver instruction can each be displayed on the screen of the navigation device at the same time with their own border.

To visually differentiate the individual maneuvers associated with a cover maneuver instruction from other single maneuver instructions, a graphically associated graphics scheme may be used for their graphical display. In particular, the individual maneuvers associated with the cover maneuver instruction may be represented in the graphical display with a characteristically associated color scheme to thereby intuitively inform the driver that they are not single manual maneuvers but individual maneuvering instructions associated with a cover maneuvering instruction. Various aspects of the invention are illustrated schematically in the drawings and are explained below by way of example.

Show it:

1 shows the positioning of a plurality of individual maneuvering instructions along the route sections of a route after a first analysis step;

FIG. 2 shows the positioning of a coverage maneuver instruction resulting from the single maneuver instructions of FIG. 1 after a second analysis step; FIG.

Fig. 3 is a schematically illustrated road situation with tunnel.

FIG. 1 shows a part of a route 01, which consists of several sections 02, 03 and 04, in a schematized manner. The section 03 shown in hatched form leads through a tunnel and is therefore marked in the path network database with a tunnel attribute. Accordingly, in the section 03, the satellite position signal can not be received. The section 03 is therefore a cover section in the sense of the invention.

When generating the maneuvering instructions in the maneuvering output module, the maneuvering instructions b_l to b_n in the direction of the route section 04 in the route section 02, the maneuvering instructions a_l in the cover section, the maneuvering instructions i_l in and in the route section 04 must be output in the direction of the route section 04 in the section 02 explain corresponding maneuvers in these sections for the user. The output location of the various maneuvering instructions b_l to b_n, i_l to i_n and a_l is marked in FIG. 1 by the corresponding arrows.

Due to the missing satellite position signal in the coverage section 03, the maneuvering instructions i_l to i_n can Broken position determination can not be positioned with the required reliability. Therefore, to solve this problem, a cover maneuver instruction s is formed from the single maneuver instructions i_l to the cover portion 03 and from the maneuver instruction a_l, which is shortly after the cover portion 03.

As shown in FIG. 2, the cover maneuvering instruction s consists of the combination of the single maneuver instructions i_l to i n of the cover portion 03 and the single maneuver instruction a_l. As further shown in FIG. 2, the cover maneuvering instruction s is outputted just before entering the cover portion 03 to inform the driver in advance about the maneuvers to be executed in the cover portion 03. The cover maneuvering instruction may in this case include an additional user instruction that informs the driver that he is entering the cover section 03, namely a tunnel. For example, the coverage maneuver statement s may read: "In 1 km you will enter a tunnel. In the tunnel, keep to the right lane and follow the exit of the tunnel on the right. At 500 m after the exit from the tunnel, turn left. "

Fig. 3 shows the road situation in the area of a highway 05, which passes through a tunnel 06. In the area of tunnel 06, the motorway 05 has exits 04 and 07 and entrances 08 and 09. In addition, another exit 05 or entrance 06 is provided immediately behind the tunnel 06 in the direction of travel of the directional arrow 07. If the driver drives in the direction of the directional arrow 07 into the tunnel 06, he receives a cover maneuver instruction at the position 14, which contains instructions for his behavior in the area of the junction of the exit 08 and the junction at the exit 09.

If, on the other hand, the driver drives from the feeder road 15 via the entrance 10 in the opposite direction to the motorway 05, he receives at the position on 16 is a cover maneuver instruction that contains instructions for its behavior at the junction of exit 1 1. As far as the distance for the maneuvering instruction given on the feeder road 15 for turning into the driveway 10 and the covering maneuvering instruction at the position 16 is too short, both instructions can also be combined with each other.

Even if the tunnel is approached via the side entrance 12, a coverage maneuvering instruction may be issued at position 17 to inform the driver of his behavior at the fork to exit 09.

Claims

claims

A method of operating a navigation device, comprising

an input device, at which operator commands and / or location information, in particular starting points and / or destination points, can be entered,

a signal receiving unit for receiving position signals, in particular GPS signals,

a position determination unit which determines the current position from the position signals,

a road network database, which also contains information about road sections (coverage sections 03) with position signal quality insufficient for determining the position,

a route calculation unit for calculating a planned route (01) taking into account the location information and the road network database, the route leading from the starting point to the destination point,

a maneuvering output module capable of generating and outputting audible and / or graphical maneuvering instructions, characterized in that covering portions (03) lying on the route are identified, wherein before entering a cover portion (03) an acoustic and / or graphic coverage maneuvering instruction (s and the coverage maneuvering instruction (s) includes at least one instruction (i, a) for the user to access the route (01) in the coverage section (03) and / or shortly after the coverage section (03) consequences.

A method according to claim 1, characterized in that the coverage maneuver instruction (s) includes all instructions (i, a) for the user to the route (01) in the coverage section

(03) and / or shortly after the cover section (03).

3. The method according to claim 1 or 2, characterized in that the cover maneuvering instruction (s) consists of a plurality of individual maneuvering instructions (i, a), each associated with different individual maneuvers in the cover section (03), the

Single maneuver instructions (i, a) can be combined acoustically and / or graphically.

A method according to any one of claims 1 to 3, characterized in that the time interval between the output of the last regular maneuvering instruction (b) associated with the last maneuvering ahead of the covering portion (03) and the output of the covering maneuvering instruction (s) is detected, wherein falls below a predetermined threshold, the last regular maneuvering instruction (b) and the cover maneuvering instruction (s) are combined acoustically and / or graphically and / or parts of the last regular maneuvering instruction (b) and / or parts of the cover maneuvering instruction (s) be suppressed.

5. The method according to any one of claims 1 to 4, characterized in that sections with tunnel attribute are automatically identified as cover sections (03).

A method according to any one of claims 1 to 5, characterized in that an additional user hint is integrated into the coverage maneuvering instruction (s) informing the user of the reason for issuing the coverage maneuvering instruction and / or the type of coverage area.

7. The method according to any one of claims 1 to 6, characterized in that the cover maneuvering instruction (s) is repeated at least once.

8. The method according to claim 7, characterized in that the repetition of the cover maneuver instruction (s) takes place after input of an associated operator command.

9. The method according to claim 7, characterized in that the repetition of the cover maneuver instruction (s) automatically, in particular at regular time intervals, takes place.

10. The method according to any one of claims 7 to 9, characterized in that the cover maneuvering instruction (s) is repeated several times until the exit of the cover section (03) is determined by the position detection unit.

A method according to any one of claims 7 to 10, characterized in that, upon repeating the coverage maneuvering instruction (s), the additional user instruction informing the user of the reason for issuing the coverage maneuvering instruction and / or the kind of the coverage portion, is suppressed.

12. A method according to any one of claims 7 to 11, characterized in that the part of the coverage maneuvering instruction (s) containing instructions (a) for the user to follow the route shortly after the coverage section (03) is repeated when the leaving section of the cover section is detected by the position determination unit and the maneuver associated with the instruction (a) has not yet been executed.

13. The method according to any one of claims 1 to 12, characterized in that in the graphical output of the cover maneuvering instruction (s) the instructions associated with the individual maneuvers in the cover section (03) are each separately, in particular each with its own border represented.

14. The method according to any one of claims 1 to 13, characterized in that in the graphical output of the cover maneuvering instruction (s) associated with the individual maneuvers in the cover section (03) instructions with the Abdeckungsmanöveran conditions characteristically associated graphics scheme, in particular with a the cover maneuver instructions associated coloring, are displayed.