JP2001280986A - Map display device - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a map display device capable of displaying a shape of a road such as the number of curves and a radius of the curve quantitatively. SOLUTION: When desired two points, of which one point is a start point and the other is an end point, are specified, a route (a road) from the start point to the end point is selected. Then, the route is displayed on a left half part of a display device 7, and various shapes of the road such as the number of curves in the route, a radius of the curve, a length of the road having a previously set width, a dangerous area, and existence and the number of intersections are quantitatively displayed.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a map display device for quantitatively displaying the number of curves of a road in a designated section and the degree of curvature of the curve.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art For example, in a vehicle traveling route guidance device (car navigation system), a destination route from a departure point to a destination is set for a designated destination, and the destination route is displayed on a display device. The vehicle is guided to the destination by highlighting it on the map displayed in, or instructing the direction in which the vehicle should travel according to the destination route by voice.

[0003] Such a traveling route guidance device for a vehicle includes:
For example, when traveling along a designated section using a toll road as well as a destination route, a toll road of the section is displayed on a display device for convenience.

[0004]

Some vehicle drivers are not good at traveling on curved roads such as mountain roads, or, when their driving skills are inexperienced, on sharply curved roads and widths. There is a demand to avoid narrow roads.
However, in the conventional vehicle travel route guidance device, the user can see only the rough route, such as the road leading to the destination, which has many curves, by looking at the destination route highlighted on the display device.

[0005] In such a case, the number of curves on the road to be traveled, the radius of those curves, the width of the road, the road with a large elevation difference, etc., are concretely described. If it can be grasped as an appropriate numerical value, it is possible to judge whether or not the road is a difficult course based on the driving technique of the driver and to select another road. However, the conventional vehicle travel route guidance device cannot provide such information.

The present invention has been made in view of the above circumstances, and has as its object to provide a map display device capable of quantitatively displaying morphological information such as the number of road curves and the diameter of a curve. .

[0007]

According to the first aspect of the present invention, the morphological information about the road in the designated section is quantitatively displayed on the display device. Information about the form can be known quantitatively. Then, based on the quantitative information, the difficulty of traveling on this road can be determined. According to the second aspect of the present invention, the number of road curves and the diameter of the curves are displayed as road form information, so that it is possible to easily grasp the difficulty of traveling on the road.

According to the third aspect of the present invention, since the curve displayed on the display device is a curve having a diameter smaller than a preset value, a large curve having no problem in operation is not displayed. According to a fourth aspect of the present invention, in the display device,
In addition to quantitatively displaying the morphological information about the road in the specified section and displaying the road in the specified section separately from other roads,
You can know it by comparing it with the diameter of the curve.

[0009]

DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS One embodiment of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings. As shown in FIG. 6, the vehicle travel guide device includes a GPS receiver 1, a direction sensor 2, and a vehicle speed sensor 3 as current position detecting means for detecting the current position of the vehicle. The GPS receiver 1 receives a radio wave from an artificial satellite and outputs a signal indicating the current position of the vehicle.
The direction sensor 2 detects the traveling direction of the vehicle using, for example, terrestrial magnetism and outputs a direction signal. The vehicle speed sensor 3 detects the traveling speed of the vehicle based on the number of rotations of the wheels, and outputs a distance signal. The output signals of the GPS receiver 1, the azimuth sensor 2, and the vehicle speed sensor 3 are provided to the control device 4.

[0010] A storage device 5 is connected to the control device 4. This storage device 5 functions as a map storage means, and includes a hard disk storing map data,
A storage medium such as a D-ROM and a DVD-ROM is provided, and outputs map data and the like to the control device 4. Note that the storage device 5 also stores voice data for generating guidance voice.

The operation unit 6 as operation means is constituted by a wireless remote controller, a key switch attached to the display device 7 or a touch switch for directly touching a display screen, and the like. A destination or a passing point can be input to the control device 4 by designating a position on the map displayed on the screen or inputting a telephone number. When searching for a destination route, the departure place is usually the current position of the vehicle, but if it is desired to set a position different from the current position as the departure place, the departure is made using the operation unit 6 as described above. The point can be set arbitrarily. The display device 7 is provided on an instrument panel of the vehicle, and displays a road map, a current position of the vehicle, and the like. As the display device 7, a liquid crystal display device, a CRT display device, or the like can be used.

The control device 4 is mainly composed of a computer, in this embodiment, a microcomputer. The control device 4 is connected to the display device 7 by signals from the GPS receiver 1, the azimuth sensor 2, the vehicle speed sensor 3, and the operation unit 6 as described above. And displaying a current map of the vehicle on the road map.

The control device 4 also functions as route setting means. When a departure place and a destination are designated by the operation unit 6 as point setting means, the control device 4 searches for an optimum route therebetween. I have. Then, when performing route guidance for the destination, the control device 4 highlights the destination route on the display device 7 and uses the voice guidance device 8 that constitutes route guidance means together with the display device 7 to display the destination route. Arrival guidance along a route, for example, at a predetermined timing before reaching a right turn point or a left turn point, is configured to execute an arithmetic processing for generating a voice for guidance of the right turn or the left turn.

Here, a hard disk, a CD-ROM,
The map data stored in a storage medium such as a DVD-ROM will be described. The map data includes drawing data, route data, index data, and the like. The drawing data is for displaying a road map on the screen of the display device 7, and has node information and link information. That is, each road on the map is divided into a plurality of nodes by nodes indicating intersections, branch points, and the like, and two nodes are defined as links,
Compose a map by connecting those links,
Based on the idea or others. Note that a node may be included in the middle of a link in some cases.

The node information includes, as shown in FIG.
It is composed of a number unique to the node (node number), position coordinates, name, altitude, data indicating whether or not it is a dangerous zone, and whether or not it is an intersection.

As shown in FIG. 4, the link information includes a number unique to the link (link number), the coordinates of the start and end nodes of the link, the coordinates of the node in the middle of the link, and the type of road (expressway, national road, etc.). , Prefectural roads, etc.), data indicating the width, etc., as well as various data such as the elevation of the shape points in the middle of the link and the angle formed by the line segment between the shape points with respect to a specific direction (eg, north) ing. The shape point is, for example, a road (link) between two nodes N1 and N2.
5 is defined as bending points P1 to P7 at a predetermined angle or more in the link, and a link is formed by line segments connecting these shape points P1 to P7.

Further, the index data means that when a departure place or a destination is input by a place name, a building name, a telephone number, or the like,
This is for searching for the position, and has data in which a place name, a building name, a telephone number, and the like are associated with coordinates on a map corresponding to the place name, the building name, the telephone number, and the like. Then, the control device 4 controls the operation unit 6
When a place name, building name, telephone number, etc. are specified by
The coordinates of the point are detected from the index data and displayed on the road map of the display device 7.

On the other hand, the route data is used for setting a destination route, and has node information, link information and network information. The link information in the route data includes data necessary for cost calculation such as a link length, in addition to the information included in the link information in the drawing data. The link length is data indicating a road length indicated by the link. The network information is information on how links are connected at each node, for example, data indicating that links B, C, D, and E are connected to node A.

Next, the operation of the above configuration will be described with reference to the flowchart shown in FIG. The driver of the vehicle operates the operation unit 6 to designate two desired points and select one of the points as a start point and the other point as an end point to select a route. Also,
By operating the operation unit 6, a desired radius and width are input (diameter and width designating means) in order to display a curve having a certain radius or less and to display a road length having a certain width or less.

Then, the control device 4 first sets the designated 2
It is determined whether there is a road connecting the points (step S1). If there is no road connecting the two points ("NO" in step S1), the control device 4 displays an error message on the display device 7 (step S2), and ends.

If there is a road connecting the two points, the control device 4 determines "YES" in step S1 and changes the route R to another road in the left half of the display device 7 as shown in FIG. (Path drawing means; step S3). Next, the control device 7 calculates the distance of the set route (distance between two points along the road) (distance calculation means; step S4), and then calculates the linear distance between the two points (linear distance calculation). Means: Step S5).

Thereafter, the control device 4 executes, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 6-2, based on the angle of the line segment between the shape points, the coordinates of the shape points, and the like.
According to the road shape calculation method disclosed in Japanese Patent No. 5294, a curve is determined and the radius of each curve and the direction of the curve are calculated. Then, of the curves, a curve smaller than the radius (designated radius) previously input from the operation unit 6 is selected (the above is a curve calculation means; step S6).

Subsequently, the control device 4 calculates an altitude difference between the nodes to calculate a maximum altitude difference from the starting point to the ending point (altitude difference calculating means; step S7), and then the operation unit 6
Calculates the distance of a road having a width equal to or less than the width input from (Narrow road super calculation means; Step S8), and thereafter calculates the number of dangerous zones and intersections (Danger zone number calculation means, intersection number calculation means; Step S9) ). And the display device 4
Displays the distance and straight line distance between the start and end points, the number and radius of curves, the elevation difference, the narrow road width, the danger zone, and the number of intersections determined in the above manner on the right side of the display device 7 (quantitatively). Drawing means; step S10), end.

Then, the driver can grasp the condition of the road to be driven from the various information displayed on the display device 7 as described above. For example,
By comparing the distance between the start and end points with the straight line distance,
Judge whether it is a circuitous route, judge whether it is a road with many steep slopes from the altitude difference and the road, or
It is possible to judge how steep the curve is from the number of right and left curves below the designated radius and the radius of the curves below the designated radius. Furthermore, based on the distance of the road having a width equal to or less than a predetermined width, whether the road is expected to have difficulty passing by the oncoming lane, or is a road with a dangerous zone,
It is possible to know whether or not the road has many intersections.

For this reason, if the vehicle is not yet proficient in driving, it is necessary to re-select a route and travel on a different road, or no matter which route is traveled, By performing cautionary driving based on the information, it is possible to drive safely, which helps prevent accidents before they occur.

Further, the display device 7 quantitatively displays the form of the above-mentioned roads and displays the roads separately from other roads, so that the displayed curves, danger zones,
It is possible to recognize where the intersection or the like is on the route by illuminating the road, which can further help prevent accidents.

The present invention is not limited to the embodiment described above and shown in the drawings, but can be extended or modified as follows. The curve, the direction and the radius may be provided as data without calculation. The mode of quantitatively displaying the road is not limited to the above embodiment. The map display device is not limited to a vehicle. Connect your PC or mobile phone to the Internet,
The present invention may be applied to a map display device configured to obtain road map information from the Internet and display it on a display device of a personal computer.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 shows an embodiment of the present invention, and is a front view of a display device quantitatively representing a form of a designated road.

FIG. 2 is a flowchart showing control contents when displaying a road form;

FIG. 3 is a diagram showing a configuration of node information.

FIG. 4 is a diagram showing a configuration of link information.

FIG. 5 shows an example of a link.

FIG. 6 is a block diagram of a vehicle map display device.

[Explanation of symbols]

In the figure, 1 is a GPS receiver, 4 is a control device, 5 is a storage device (map storage means), and 7 is a display device.

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Claims (4)

[Claims] 1. A map storage means for storing map data, and a display device for quantitatively displaying form information about a road in a designated section based on the map data stored in the map storage means. Map display device. 2. The map display device according to claim 1, wherein the road form information is the number of road curves and the diameter of the curves. 3. The map display device according to claim 2, wherein the curve displayed on the display device is a curve having a diameter smaller than a preset value. 4. The display device quantitatively displays morphological information on a road in the designated section,
The map display device according to any one of claims 1 to 3, wherein the road in the designated section is displayed while being distinguished from other roads.