Toyota Jidosha Kabushiki Kaisha

Aisin Aw Co., Ltd.

Fuminari Ishihara

Hiroyuki Kanemitsu

Nobuhide Kuroda

Mitsuhiro Fukui

When information regarding position of a facility, such as a parking lot, is requested from a terminal (,), an information center (,) supplies position information to the terminal (,) as a relative position using a landmark, such as a neighboring road. The terminal (,) computes a shift from a position of a landmark in a local map database (,) and a position of a received landmark in a map matching processor (,), and corrects the facility position. If the landmark has not been stored in the map database (,) at the terminal (,), relative data based on another road is resent.

Positional information providing system and apparatus

A system (UTMS) is disclosed for sending guiding destination data to a control center and calculating a recommended route at the control center while taking traffic conditions into account and presenting the route to a vehicle, in which a route guidance apparatus promptly obtains the recommended route. A controller installed on the vehicle uses data stored in a map data memory to independently search for a route to a destination, and a UTMS link positioned on the obtained route is transmitted to the control center as guiding destination data. Until the search completes, immediately after the destination has been set, a UTMS area to which that destination belongs is transmitted to the control center as temporary guiding destination data. Thereafter, a UTMS link that appears from the search is transmitted as guiding destination data. A recommended route is obtained from the control center even before the search completes, thereby improving the utilization efficiency of the UTMS.

Route guidance apparatus

A vehicle route guide system in which a vehicle transmits a destination to a control center, and the control center obtains an optimum route in consideration of current traffic conditions and notifies the vehicle of the route. In order to avoid a detour from a desirable route to the destination, the vehicle itself searches a route to the destination, and transmits destination data on a link to the control center. The link is located nearest to the destination among all UTMS links on the searched route, the UTMS links being controlled by the control center. Receiving the data, the control center calculates a recommended route which includes the notified link as a tailing link, and informs the vehicle of the route. The vehicle combines the searched route and the informed route into a final guiding route.

Dynamic route guidance apparatus

On the side of a vehicle, when the CRC error check of received data is performed (S19) and an error occurs plural times (S21, S22), it can be determined that an on-vehicle down link is defective (S23). Furthermore, the results of the CRC error check are stored, and at the time of an up link communication (S14), the results are sent to another road side equipment. Thus, in the road side equipment, a down link error of the other road side equipment can be detected on the basis of the sent information. Moreover, information as to whether or not a signal regarding a link which the car has passed is received from a beacon (S23) is stored, and this is sent in the up link communication (S14), whereby an abnormal road side equipment can be detected on the basis of the sequence of this link. In addition, an up link problem on the side of the car can be detected from the fact that specific information cannot be received (S26).

Growing community of inventors

Susono, Japan

Fuminari Ishihara