JPH08285632A - Navigation method and apparatus - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE: To provide a navigation system which does not display a map and can perform fine road guidance. CONSTITUTION: An earth magnetism sensor 10 mounted on a navigation apparatus detects a direction (X) toward which the apparatus stands. A direction difference obtaining part 20 uses a current position coordinate and a target position coordinate to obtain a difference between a detected result in the earth magnetism sensor 10 and the direction of the set route, getting access to road network information preliminarily prepared, to compute the direction (Y) of a set route. A picture arrow display control part 30 displays a picture arrow on a display at the angle displaced by the angle of a difference from the direction toward which the apparatus stands in accordance with the angle of the difference obtained by the means 20 and does not display map. A driver can advance in the direction of the picture arrow regardless of the direction toward which the navigation apparatus stands.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a navigation method and apparatus, and more particularly to a navigation method and apparatus that effectively utilizes detailed road network information on a home map level.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, a road map with road network information (1 / 25,000 or a rougher map) is generally used for a car navigation device or a navigation device that can be carried by a person. Only rough roads are realized because the road network information is available only for roads that exceed the standard (prefectural roads, etc.). This is shown in FIG.

In the example of FIG. 7, only the thick solid line portion has road network information on the road map, and when the route guidance is to be realized with this, between the nearest road network information points from the current position of Guidance between the nearest road network information points from the destination of or is not possible. This is especially unsuitable for directions for pedestrians.

[0004]

As a countermeasure for the above, it is conceivable to use a detailed residential map with road network information as a navigation device (navigation device). However, such a residential map is simply displayed on the display as it is. There are the following problems in realizing detailed directions.

(1) Residential map data has a much larger amount of data than residential map data, and is difficult to handle on a navigation device because performance such as processing speed, display speed, and memory amount deteriorates. is there. In addition, the area that can be stored in one storage medium (CD-ROM or memory card) is narrow and inconvenient. (2) Even if you try to display residential map level data on the display, only the small area can be displayed because the display is small. It becomes difficult to understand. Also, if you increase the scale to display a wide area on the display as much as possible, house figures, characters, and symbols will be crushed or overlapped,
It becomes harder to see.

The present invention has been made to solve such a problem, and its purpose is to enable detailed route guidance without directly displaying a detailed residential map on the display. It is to provide a navigation method and device for doing the above.

[0007]

According to the navigation method of the present invention, it is possible to guide the road only by the pictorial arrows or the ruled lines without displaying the surrounding map (this is especially sufficient for pedestrians). ), The detailed surrounding map is not displayed, but the direction to go is displayed by the picture arrow or ruled line and the route guidance is provided, and the map data handles only the road network information at the residential map level (figures such as background buildings and roads). By not handling data, character data, symbol data such as map symbols, etc.), it is possible to realize detailed directions including general roads and residential roads. The conventional map display around the route and the method of displaying the picture arrow in the current traveling direction at the current position is to show the picture arrow in the direction which should go on the display no matter which direction the navigation device is facing. The difference is in the display.

As shown in FIG. 1, the basic configuration of the navigation device of the present invention comprises a geomagnetic sensor 10, a direction difference acquisition means 20, and a pictorial arrow display control means 30 mounted in the navigation device. The geomagnetic sensor 10 automatically detects the direction in which the navigation system device is facing (the direction in which the navigation system user is facing). This direction is indicated by X in FIG. The direction difference acquisition means 20 calculates the direction of the set route, and acquires the difference between the detection result of the geomagnetic sensor 10 and the direction of the set route. The direction of the set route can be easily calculated because the coordinate points of the road network information usually have a coordinate body type with north and south as the Y axis and east and west as the X axis. In FIG. 2, the direction of the set route is indicated by Y, and the difference from the direction X of the device is indicated by Z.
The pictorial arrow display control means 30 displays pictorial arrows at an angle deviated by the difference angle from the direction of the navigation system device based on the difference angle (Z) obtained by the direction difference acquisition means 20. The operation of each means 10, 20, 30 loops until it arrives at the destination, during which it displays a pictorial arrow in the direction it should go no matter which direction the navigation system equipment is facing. The pictorial arrow in FIG. 2 indicates this, and the user may proceed in the direction of the pictorial arrow.

[0009]

In the navigation method and apparatus according to the present invention, a house map with road network information at the house map level is used as the map information, and the graphic data, character data, and symbol data that are the background of the map are not treated Displaying arrows and ruled lines on the display to guide the route.
As a result, since background data is not required in the storage medium, a small amount of data can be stored even if road network information at the residential map level is stored (generally, most of the map data is occupied by this background data). Also, since the amount of data to be processed is reduced, the performance is improved rather than degraded. Further, since the map is not displayed on the display, there is naturally no factor that makes it difficult to see, such as crushing of characters and figures due to reduced scale. Furthermore, instead of displaying a pictorial arrow or the like in the direction in which it is moving as in the past, a pictorial arrow or the like is displayed in the direction in which it should be advancing. Can be solved.

[0010]

An embodiment of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 3 shows a block diagram of a navigation device according to an embodiment of the present invention. In FIG. 3, 10
Reference numeral 1 denotes a CPU that controls the entire navigation device, 1
Reference numeral 02 is a current position acquisition unit using GPS, 103 is a destination input unit using a joystick or the like, 104 is a display unit, 105 is a shortest route calculation unit, and 106 is for storing road network information of the shortest route. R
AM (read / write memory), 107 is an external storage unit for storing road network information, 108 is a ROM (read only memory) for storing picture arrow data,
Reference numeral 109 denotes a geomagnetic sensor that acquires the direction in which the navigation device is facing, 110 denotes a sensor interface that converts the sensor signal of the geomagnetic sensor 109 into a signal that can be recognized by the CPU 101, 111 denotes a direction difference acquisition unit that acquires the direction of the shortest route, Reference numeral 112 denotes a picture arrow display control unit for controlling the display angle of the picture arrow and displaying it on the display unit 104. It should be noted that the CPU 101 may also perform some or all of the processing of the shortest route calculation unit 105, the direction difference acquisition unit 111, and the pictorial arrow display control unit 112.

Here, in the road network information stored in the external storage unit 107, for example, the connection relationships of roads that have already been put on the market and sold are represented by a graph structure, and various road-related attributes are added. Use one. In the graph structure, nodes represent intersections and edges represent roads. A road has a name, a level (representing a national road, a highway, etc.), a length, a thickness, and a coordinate list representing the shape of the road as its attribute value, and an intersection has a name and coordinates as its attribute value. These attributes are necessary for considering route search and the like. In addition to the cross and T-shape, L
For the sake of convenience, we also consider the bend points of roads that bend in a letter shape and the end points of roads.

The graph-structured road network information is not only suitable for representing roads, but also has the advantage of being able to utilize knowledge of graph theory and the like, and is useful for any application related to maps. It can be said that it is the basic data (Reference: Tanaka et al. "Extraction of road network by road tracing algorithm", The 45th National Convention of Information Studies, 1J-1 (1992), and Horie et al. "Road network from vector map" Generation, ”Spring Society of Japan, D-466 (1994)).

FIG. 4 is an example of a processing flowchart of the embodiment of the present invention. The operation of FIG. 3 will be described below with reference to this flowchart.

When the processing is started, first, the current position coordinates are acquired using the current position acquisition unit (GPS) 102 (step S1). Next, the user inputs the destination input unit 103.
Enter the destination (destination position) using (step S
2). This may be a method already adopted in the navigation device. Next, in the shortest path calculation unit 105,
The current position coordinates acquired by the GPS 102 and the input unit 103
Using the target position coordinates input from the external storage unit 107
To obtain the shortest route, read the road network information of the shortest route, and
It is stored in the AM 106 (step S3).

On the other hand, the geomagnetic sensor 109 always obtains the direction (X in FIG. 2) in which the navigation device (navigation device) is facing (step S4). The direction difference acquisition unit 111 accesses the road network information of the shortest route stored in the RAM 106 and calculates and acquires the direction of the route at the local point (Y in FIG. 2) using the coordinate information of the road network information. (Step S5). Next, the direction difference acquisition unit 111 calculates the direction difference (Z in FIG. 2) obtained in steps S4 and S5 (step S).
6). The pictorial arrow display control unit 112 receives the information on the direction difference obtained in step S6, and after determining the display direction of the pictorial arrow to be relatively displayed from the direction (X) in which the navigation device is currently facing (step S7). ), ROM 108
The pictorial arrow data stored in is displayed and displayed on the display unit 104 in the decided display direction (direction of the route in FIG. 2) (step S8). Next, it is determined whether or not the vehicle has arrived at the destination (step S
9). This can be easily realized by the current position acquisition unit 102 acquiring the current position coordinates at any time and superimposing the current position coordinates on the coordinates of the road network information in the RAM 106. The navigation user uses the display unit 10
4 proceeds in the direction of the arrow above 4 and ends the process when the destination is reached.

FIG. 5 shows an example of a display according to the present invention, in which the direction in which the user should go is displayed only by the pictorial arrow on the display, whichever direction the navigation device (navigation device) is facing. When viewing the entire route, it may be displayed as shown in FIG. FIG. 6 is a view in which the route is easily displayed with a ruled line by using the road network information of the shortest route in the RAM 106.

[0018]

As described above in detail, according to the present invention, the route is guided by the pictorial arrows or the ruled lines, and the map data handles only the road network information at the house map level, so that the detailed house map can be obtained. It is possible to avoid the fact that the characters are crushed when it is displayed on the display and it is difficult to see, and it is difficult to grasp the surrounding situation because it is a narrow area display, and the map data can be significantly small. Therefore, detailed guidance can be provided using detailed residential map level information (not handling graphic data such as background buildings and roads, character data, and symbol data such as map symbols). In addition, the fact that the direction to proceed is not known because the peripheral map is not displayed, and the remarkable effect that the destination can be reached without hesitation by displaying the direction to proceed with a pictorial arrow or the like.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a diagram showing a basic configuration of a navigation device of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a diagram illustrating a method of displaying pictorial arrows according to the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram of an embodiment of a navigation device of the present invention.

FIG. 4 is a processing flowchart of an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 5 is a diagram showing a display example of a display according to the present invention.

FIG. 6 is a diagram showing another display example according to the present invention.

FIG. 7 is a display example of a conventional display.

[Explanation of symbols]

 10 geomagnetic sensor 20 direction difference acquisition means 30 pictorial arrow display control means

─────────────────────────────────────────────────── ─── Continuation of the front page (51) Int.Cl. ⁶ Identification code Internal reference number FI Technical display location G09B 29/10 9194-5L G06F 15/40 370C

Claims (2)

[Claims] 1. A navigation method for guiding a route using a map, wherein a route is obtained using road network information on a residential map level, and the route is guided by a pictorial arrow or ruled line display without displaying a map. Navigation method to do. 2. A navigation device for guiding a route using a map, means for storing road map information at a residential map level, means for inputting a target position, means for acquiring the current position of the navigation device, A means for detecting the direction (X) in which the navigation device is facing, and the road network information is accessed by the target position and the current position to determine the direction (Y) at the local point along the target position from the current position. And means for obtaining a difference (X-Y) from the direction (X) in which the navigation device is facing, and means for displaying a pictorial arrow in the direction in which the display device should move using the obtained difference. A navigation device comprising: