Alpine Electronics, Inc.

Maung Han

Benjamin David Poiesz

Andrew S De Silva

A display method and apparatus for displaying three-dimensional terrains and route guidance achieves a flexible and high detail three-dimensional display operation by enabling to change parameters, such as a viewing angle of a selected three-dimensional object, a height of a selected three-dimensional object, and a level of details (LOD) of a selected part of the image. The display method and apparatus also enables to compensate discontinuity, if any, at a border portion of two or more images where such parameters have been changed. Since such a change is made only a selected portion or object on the three-dimensional image, a computation power, memory space or other resources of the navigation system may not be overburdened by such operations.

Method and apparatus for displaying three-dimensional terrain and route guidance

An information display device for displaying three-dimensional route and terrain includes a plurality of databases for storing information; a display control unit to dynamically manage the information with different levels-of-detail (LODs); and a user interface communicatively coupled with the control unit to display the managed information with different levels of detail. In one embodiment, the control unit may include a terrain scaling unit to dynamically increase or decrease the height or '3D-ness' of the terrain based on the angle and height of the viewing. The control unit may also include an LOD control unit and a scene stitching unit. In addition, the information display device provides a three-dimensional real-time rendering environment including three-dimensional guidance information which allows the user to understand complex maneuvers without using two-dimensional overlays.

A method and apparatus for a navigation system detects a hidden point on a route on a monitor screen showing a three-dimensional map when visibility of the route begins to be lost, and provides a warning message including relevant information that is helpful to navigate the hidden point. The method includes steps of displaying a three-dimensional map image which includes an image of a route on which a user or user's vehicle is travelling, detecting a hidden point of the route on the three-dimensional map image at which the route becomes invisible by an obstruction object when viewed from a current position of the user, and notifying the user about the hidden point on the route thereby enabling the user to know the hidden point on the route in advance.

Hidden point detection and warning method and apparatus for navigation system

A display method and apparatus for a navigation system utilizes enables a smooth map scroll operation when a scroll direction is changed sharply. Such a smooth map scroll operation is applied to a situation where such a change of scroll direction is within a predetermined angle range by adding a scroll direction bias for each movement. The display method dynamically adjusts the scroll direction bias and the update frequency depending on the degree of direction change and the available system resources such as a processing speed in the navigation system. Therefore, the navigation system is able to display the smooth operation of the map scroll so that the user is able to recognize the images actually illustrated on the screen and to reach the intended location of the map image quickly and accurately.

Map scroll method and apparatus for conducting smooth map scroll operation for navigation system

A method and apparatus for a navigation system achieves a smooth and, intuitive scrolling operation by checking available resources such as a computational power of the navigation system and map data stored in a video memory to determine an optimum scrolling operation and to dynamically adjust a scroll speed and a scale factor to move an image on a monitor screen to a specified location. The method includes the steps of: receiving a scroll signal from an input device for scrolling an image on the monitor screen, checking a current condition of the navigation system related to the scroll operation, and conducting the scroll operation while adjusting the scroll speed and scale factor of the image based on the current condition.

Method and apparatus for incorporating adaptive scroll operation for navigation system

A method and apparatus for a navigation system efficiently stores the data associated with a calculated route to the destination in a backup memory by incorporating a direction coding method. The method and apparatus can be advantageously implemented in such a situation where the operation of the navigation system is terminated during the route guidance operation before reaching the destination. Since each direction code requires a small amount of data bit, an overall amount of data for the calculated route can be dramatically reduced and can be stored in a small memory space. When the navigation system is restarted, the calculated route will be reproduced based on the direction codes retrieved from the backup memory, thereby enabling to continue the route guidance operation to guide the user the destination.

Method and apparatus for efficiently storing map data regarding calculated route for navigation system

A map scrolling method and apparatus enables to incrementally tracing back to previous relevant locations of the map image. The method includes the steps of: recording information on a stopped location of a map image every time when a user stops during a map scrolling operation; comparing the recorded information with a predetermined threshold value to determine whether the information satisfies threshold value; recording the stopped location in a memory as a traceable location when the recorded information satisfies the threshold value; and tracing back to the map image of the traceable locations recorded in the memory, one by one, every time when the user presses a cancel key or its equivalent of the navigation system.

Map image scrolling method and apparatus for navigation system

A navigation system is designed to scale a map image such that a redrawn map image shows an icon of the most relevant object at a center of a cursor when the scale of the map image is changed so that the user will not lose sight of the most relevant object such as an icon showing a destination. The navigation system prioritizes an icon representing a particular object based on a predetermined priority order and changes the position of the map image so that the icon of the highest priority comes to the center of the cursor when the map scale is changed. Thus, the icon of the highest priority always remains at the center of the cursor, thereby preventing from loosing the sight of the icon of the highest priority when zooming in the map image.

Display method and apparatus for navigation system

A method and apparatus for a navigation system conducts a data search for finding relative density of objects such as points of interest in a specified area and displays the result of the search in various manners. The display method includes the steps of: defining a size and shape of a search template; scanning the search template on the search area by displacing its position by a predetermined increment; counting and recording a number of objects on the search area within the search template at every increment of the displacement position, thereby creating an object distribution matrix; applying a cluster search algorithm to the object distribution matrix, thereby detecting distribution of clusters of the objects; and displaying the clusters of the objects in the search area.

Display method and apparatus for navigation system for performing cluster search of objects

A display method and apparatus for navigation system enables a user to easily see crowded POI icons and their positions in a small area on the map image by shifting the positions of POI icons in radial directions. The display method includes the steps of specifying POI icons on a map image within a region of a predefined region mark, forming a position rim which is a circle with a center of the region mark, displacing the POI icons within the region mark in radial directions to the position rim, displaying position marks at positions where the POI icons are located before the displacement within the region mark, and displaying lead lines each connecting the POI icon displaced to the position rim and the corresponding position mark.

A navigation method and system for displaying a map image and shrinking the map image relative to a center point or a reference line on the map image by a non-linear function so that an image outside of the display screen becomes visible on the screen without much decreasing the size thereof. In the first embodiment, the image is coaxially shrinked relative to the center point. In the second embodiment, the images perpendicular to the reference line are shifted toward the reference line. Because of the non-linear function, the images are shrinked with higher degree at around the center point or the reference line than that far away, thereby bringing in the far away images without much decreasing the size thereof. The shrink ratios of the images at the same distance from the center point or the reference line are the same throughout the display screen.

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Torrance, CA, United States of America

Maung Han