Pioneer Electronic Corporation

Kiyoshi Yamanaka

Morio Araki

Takeharu Arakawa

Kenichi Nobe

A navigation system includes a device for extracting map data and location name data of different locations and their corresponding coordinate data; a position detector which detects the vechile position; a map display controller which displays map data on a display, and a calculating device for determining a straight-line distance from the vehicle position to the different locations thereby producing distance values. A location name display device displays location names on the display in ascending order based on the distance values, and a user selects a desired location from among the location names displayed. The extracting device may segregate the different locations based on different categories, and the map display controller retrieves map data around a location represented by coordinate data corresponding to the desired location selected by the user.

Navigation apparatus with enhanced positional display function

An actual running distance ab from a starting position to a present position of a vehicle is calculated based on input starting position data and positions continuously detected using a GPS device etc. An estimated running distance bc from the present position to a destination is calculated based on a detected present position and input destination data. A degree of attainment T representing a degree of approach to the destination is calculated according to an equation of: T=ab/(ab+bc), and is indicated on a display to announce it to a driver.

Vehicular navigation apparatus

A navigation apparatus including a position detector for detecting a vehicle's position and outputting vehicle position data, a memory for storing map data, a display unit for displaying a variety of information, and a display controller for displaying a map on the display unit based on the map data and superimposing the vehicle's position on the map displayed on the display unit based on the vehicle's position data.

A navigation apparatus including a position detector for detecting an vehicle's position and outputting vehicle's position data, a memory for storing map data, a display unit for displaying a variety of information, and a display controller for displaying a map on the display unit based on the map data and superimposing the vehicle's position on the map displayed on the display unit based on the vehicle's position data. The apparatus further includes a commander for specifying an arbitrary position on the map displayed on the display unit; a coordinate calculator for calculating the latitude and longitude as the coordinates of the actual location corresponding to the specified position on the map and outputting the same as coordinate data; and a coordinate display controller for superimposing the coordinates of the actual location in numerical values on the displayed map based on the coordinate data.

An on-board navigation apparatus is designed to shorten the time for a display operation at the time of displaying a map and scrolling a screen while employing a buffer memory with a smaller memory capacity. The apparatus reads only block data of a block containing a display center point and block data of blocks adjoining thereto and stores the data into a buffer memory, and acquires display data forming a display screen with the display center point as a reference point from the buffer memory and performs a display operation. The reading/storing operation includes an operation of storing the block containing the display center point and blocks adjoining thereto separately into the buffer memory. The display control operation includes an operation of temporarily storing the display data into a display buffer memory before displaying it.

On-board navigation apparatus

An on-board navigation apparatus constantly displays characters of name data associated with geographical data in legible order and direction whenever the display direction is changed to one of the north, south, east, and west directions. In operation, after the geographical data and associated name data in a desired region are read, name reference point and name area of the read name data is retrieved, and display direction of map orientation is retrieved. Coordinates of a drawing start point are then calculated on the basis of absolute coordinate of name reference point in accordance with the display direction. Correspondence between absolute coordinates of the geographical data and the coordinates of the drawing start point of the name data is established, and the name data is written into the name area so that the geographical data and the name data are stored while being superimposed with each other, thereby forming map data. The display is performed on the basis of the map data produced by the superimposition.

Growing community of inventors

Kawagoe, Japan

Kiyoshi Yamanaka