JP2003139551A - Navigation device - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To make it possible to perform a retrieval of a route which make the number of temporary stops of a car at intersections having traffic lights fewer. SOLUTION: When stopping times reduction mode is selected, if the next potential node from the present position to the destination has a traffic light (Yes in Step S), a control circuit calculates an arrival time to the next potential node (Step S6). If the traffic light allows cars to pass through at the calculated time (Yes in Step S7), the next potential node is set as the next node (Step S8). Therefore, the navigation device can retrieve a route with less number of temporary stops at intersections having traffic lights.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a navigation device having a route search function for calculating a route from a current position to a destination.

[0002]

For example, a car navigation device mounted on an automobile comprises a main body equipped with a microcomputer, a display device, a GPS receiving device, a map data input device for reading road map data, and the like. Then, the location function that detects the current position of the user and displays it on the display device in a superimposed manner on the road map, the route search function that searches the recommended route to the destination specified by the user by calculation, the route to the destination It is equipped with a route guidance function to guide passengers.

By the way, usually, the route priority that gives the shortest distance to the destination or the route priority that gives the shortest time is designated, but the user stops by stopping at the "red" traffic light at the intersection. Reduce the number of times
There are also many requests to proceed without irritating.

The present invention has been made in view of the above circumstances, and an object of the present invention is to provide a navigation device capable of route search so as to reduce the number of stops at intersections.

[0005]

In order to achieve the above object, the means described in claim 1 can be adopted. According to this means, when there is an intersection with a traffic light on the route to be searched from the current position to the destination based on the road map data, the selection means provided in the route search means, the traffic light information at the time of passing the intersection. Is a travel permission signal, the intersection is preferentially selected as one point of the route,
The route can be searched so that the number of stops at the intersection is reduced.

In this case, when the selecting means searches for a route from the current position to the destination on the basis of the road map data, the selecting means is provided with a traffic light at the passing point of the route. A traffic signal presence / absence determining unit that determines whether there is an intersection based on the traffic signal information, and a progress permission determination that determines whether the traffic signal information at the time of passing through the intersection is a permission signal when it is determined that there is a traffic signal. Means, when it is determined that it is a travel permission signal and when it is determined that there is no traffic light, the intersection is selected as one point of the route, and the traffic signal information at the time of passing the intersection is a travel prohibition signal. It may be configured to include a selection determining unit that searches for another route when the determination is made.

Further, as in the means described in claim 3,
A priority condition designating unit for designating a priority condition for the route search by the route searching unit is provided, and the selecting unit selects the priority condition when the priority condition of “reduction in the number of stoppages” is designated by the priority condition designating unit. It may be configured to operate.

[0008]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS An embodiment in which the present invention is applied to a car navigation system will be described below with reference to FIGS. First, FIG. 2 schematically shows the overall electrical configuration of the car navigation device 1 according to the present embodiment.

Here, the car navigation system 1 has a C
A control circuit 2 including a PU, a ROM, a RAM, an I / O, etc. and configured as an ordinary computer is provided, and a position detector 3, an operation switch group 4, and a remote control sensor 5 are connected to the control circuit 2. And a remote controller 6 paired with the remote controller sensor 5, an infrastructure data receiver 7 for receiving data from the outside (VICS, etc.), an external memory 8 for storing information data from the outside, a display device 9, a voice output device. 10, a map data input device 11 and the like.

The position detector 3 includes a geomagnetic sensor 12, a gyroscope 13, and a distance sensor 1 having a well-known structure.
4 and a GPS receiver 15 for GPS that detects the position of the vehicle based on the radio waves from the hygiene. The control circuit 2 is configured to be used while interpolating each of the devices 12 to 15 of the position detector 3 because they have errors of different natures.
The current position, traveling direction, speed, mileage, etc. of the vehicle are detected with high accuracy based on the input from.

It should be noted that the devices 12 to 15 constituting the position detector 3 are arranged at appropriate parts of the vehicle. Further, depending on the accuracy, the position detector may be configured from a part of the above-mentioned devices 12 to 15, and in addition to the above, a steering rotation sensor, a wheel sensor for rolling wheels, or the like may be adopted. It is possible. The GPS receiver 15 can also obtain data on the current date and time.

The map data input device 11 stores various data including road map data, mark data, so-called map matching data with improved position detection accuracy, such as a DVD-ROM or a CD-ROM. It is composed of a road map data storage means composed of a large capacity storage medium and a drive device for inputting data from the map data storage medium 16 serving as a traffic light information storage means. At this time, the road map data includes data such as intersections and position coordinates on the map, roads (road shape, road width, road name, etc.) connecting the intersections, presence / absence of traffic lights at the intersections, and various facilities.

The data with a traffic light includes the time at which the signal first becomes "blue", the signal attribute (flashing signal, vehicle sensitive signal, etc.), the presence / absence of a left / right turn signal, and the change time of the progress permission signal or the signal non-permission signal. And the like are stored in advance.

The operation switch group 4 is composed of mechanical switches, a touch panel switch provided on the screen of the display device 9, and the like. , "Distance priority",
This is for inputting various commands such as selection of a road map displayed on the display device 9, in addition to constituting a priority condition designating unit for designating a priority condition such as "priority reduction of stop count". The remote controller 6 also has a function equivalent to that of the operation switch group 4, and this also functions as a priority condition designating means.

The control circuit 2 is a route search means, and its software configuration realizes a route search function based on the operation of the operation switch group 4 by the user. This route search function uses the recommended route from the current position of the vehicle to the destination entered by the user under the conditions specified by the user (“time priority”, “distance priority”, “reduction of stop count priority” above. "
Etc.) and the well-known Dijkstra method is used as the method, as described below. The route searching means includes a selecting means, and the selecting means further includes a traffic light presence determination means,
A progress permission judging means and a selection judging means are included.

FIG. 1 shows a flow chart of a route search program. The route search is programmatically
Roughly speaking, among the candidates of nodes from the current position to the destination (including so-called important points and intersections set on the map), the node satisfying the predetermined condition or the node closest to the predetermined condition is sequentially selected as the destination. There is one that searches from the side and searches for a recommended route.

Specifically, if the current position is designated as the "A" point and the destination is designated as the "B" point as shown in FIG. 3, for example, in step S1 of FIG. 1, the destination "B" point is designated. The next node candidate (in the case of FIG. 3, each node points to each intersection) is extracted from near. In this case, the node “A-6” is the first node. In the next step S2, it is determined whether or not the next node candidate extracted in step S1 is the current position. If it is not the current position, the process proceeds to step S3,
It is determined whether or not the priority condition input by the user is “priority to reduce the number of stops”.

If "priority to reduce the number of stoppages" is designated in this step S3, the process proceeds to step S4 and the count value C of the number of node changes is cleared to "0". Then, the process proceeds to step S5, and it is determined whether or not the next node candidate has a traffic light. When there is a traffic light, the process proceeds to step S6, and the arrival time to the next node candidate is calculated from the link distance and the vehicle speed. Then, in the next step S7, it is determined whether or not the traffic signal is a travel permission signal (for example, a signal such as “blue”, a straight travel permission arrow, or a right or left permission arrow) in the traveling direction at the arrival time. to decide.

If it is a progress permission signal, the process proceeds to step S8, the next node candidate is determined as the next node (selected as one point of the route), and the cost is calculated. Then, the process returns to step S1 to extract the next node.

If it is determined in step S7 that the signal is not a progress permission signal, the process proceeds to step S9 to extract another next node candidate (searches for another route),
Then, the process proceeds to step S10 and the count value C is "1".
Increment. In the next step S11, it is determined whether or not the count value C exceeds "10", and if not, the process proceeds to step S5.

When the count value C exceeds "10", the process proceeds to step S8. Also, step S
If it is determined in step 3 that the "reduction in number of stops priority" is not specified, or if it is determined in step S5 that there is no traffic light, the process proceeds to step S8. Further, when it is determined in step S2 that the next node candidate is the current position, this route search ends.

As described above, according to this embodiment, the control circuit 2
When the operation switch group 4 or the remote controller 6 specifies "priority reduction in stop count" as a priority condition, if there is an intersection with a traffic light on the route to be searched from the current position to the destination, The arrival time (passing time) to the intersection is calculated, and when the signal of the traffic signal is the advance permission signal at the calculated time, the intersection is selected as one point of the route. Therefore, it is possible to perform a route search that reduces the number of times of stopping at an intersection with a traffic light.

In order to more accurately calculate the arrival time in step S6, step S6 may be modified as shown in FIG. 4 showing the second embodiment of the present invention. That is, in step S61, for example, VIC
Information such as traffic congestion is acquired from the S center, and step S6
In step 2, it is determined whether or not there is information such as traffic jam in the relevant link. If there is information such as traffic jam in step S62, the process proceeds to step S63, the arrival time is calculated by adding information such as traffic jam to the distance and vehicle speed of the link (road between nodes), and VICS is calculated. If there is no information from the center, the process proceeds to step S64, and the arrival time (intersection passage time) is calculated from the distance and vehicle speed of the link. By doing so, it is possible to calculate the arrival time with high accuracy.

The following functions may be added to the first embodiment. For example, if the traffic light reaches a crossing when the traffic signal is a "red" or other non-progress signal, the user should input the timing of the change to the admission signal with a switch. Then, the time at which the color first becomes blue may be corrected. In this case, the correction may be automatically performed instead of the switch input. That is, a vehicle speed sensor may be provided, and the time from the time when the vehicle stops near the traffic light (vehicle speed sensor pulse output stop) to the start (vehicle speed sensor pulse output start) may be detected and stored as a correction value. .

Furthermore, the shortest time and the shortest distance from the current position to the destination are calculated, and the required time and the required distance in the "reduction of the number of stoppages" are calculated by what percentage increase of the shortest time and the shortest distance. The user may be allowed to set whether or not to allow. Further, the present invention may be implemented as a so-called pedestrian or jogging navigation device other than the car navigation device. In particular, when applied to a navigation device for jogging, it is effective for a jogging person to reduce the interruption of jogging.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a flowchart of route search showing a first embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram of an electrical configuration.

FIG. 3 is a schematic diagram of a road map for explaining the operation.

FIG. 4 is a partial flowchart of route search showing the second embodiment of the present invention.

[Explanation of symbols]

Reference numeral 2 is a control circuit (route searching means, selecting means, traffic light presence / absence determining means, advance permission determining means, selection determining means), 4 is an operation switch group (priority condition designating means), 6 is a remote controller (priority condition designating means), 16 Indicates a map data storage medium (road map data storage means, traffic signal information storage means).

   ─────────────────────────────────────────────────── ─── Continued front page    F term (reference) 2C032 HB02 HB05 HB22 HB23 HC08                       HC15 HD03 HD07 HD29                 2F029 AA02 AB01 AB07 AB13 AC02                       AC06 AC09 AC14 AC18 AD01                 5H180 AA01 BB02 BB04 BB13 BB15                       CC12 FF04 FF05 FF12 FF13                       FF22 FF25 FF27 FF35

Claims (3)

[Claims] 1. A navigation device comprising route search means for searching for a route from a current position to a destination based on road map data, the road connecting an intersection on the map, its position coordinates, and the intersection. Road map data storage means for storing road map data such as, and traffic signal information storage means for storing traffic signal information such as the presence or absence of traffic signals at intersections and the change time of the progress permission signal and the progress non-permission signal, The route search means, when there is an intersection with a traffic light on the route to be searched from the current position to the destination based on the road map data, if the traffic light information at the time of passing the intersection is a travel permission signal, the intersection A navigation device comprising a selecting means for preferentially selecting a route as one point. 2. The selecting means provided in the route searching means, when searching for a route from the current position to the destination based on the road map data, determines whether or not there is an intersection with a traffic light at the passing point of the route. Traffic light presence / absence determining means for determining whether the traffic light information is a travel permission signal when passing through the intersection when it is determined that there is a traffic light, and a travel permission signal When it is determined that the traffic signal is not present and when there is no traffic light, the intersection is selected as one point of the route, and when it is determined that the traffic signal information at the time of passing the intersection is a travel disapproval signal, 2. The navigation device according to claim 1, further comprising selection determination means for searching a route. 3. A priority condition designating unit for designating a priority condition for the route search by the route searching unit, and when the priority condition designating a priority condition of "reduction of the number of stoppages" is selected by the priority condition designating unit. 3. The navigation device according to claim 1, wherein the means is configured to perform a selecting operation.