Nissan Motor Company Limited

Yoshitaka Yatsugi

Norimasa Kishi

Masaki Watanabe

Kiyomichi Yamada

Hiroshi Tsuda

Okihiko Nakayama

Masayasu Iwasaki

Akio Kosaka

In an apparatus and method for navigating a mobile body such as a vehicle or user, an accurate and easily grasping road map graphic data in a bird's eye display mode are achieved with a running route on which the mobile body has traveled maintained and having a continuity to the past running information and operability of the navigating apparatus is improved. In the navigating apparatus and method, the present position information and display parameter information are previously set, a line of sight is determined on the basis of the forwarding direction information, a view point position is determined on the basis of the forwarding direction is determined. A road map data expressed with a two-dimensional X-Y plane as a reference is stored. The road map data stored receive their coordinate transformations on the basis of the determined view point position and direction of line of sight to generate the bird's eye view. Such generated bird's eye view image data are output to a display unit so that the bird's eye view can be viewed from a display image screen. Furthermore, character data such as names of places are selectively superimposed on respective minor regions of the image screen without superimpositions on other character data belonging to adjacent minor regions.

Portable or vehicular navigating apparatus and method capable of

A bird's eye view commonly used in a flight simulation is applicable to an apparatus and method for navigating a vehicle running on a set route of travel to a set destination using a (color) display unit according to the present invention. The bird's eye view of a road map surrounding a present position of the vehicle has a viewing point placed at a predetermined position on an upper sky in a direction opposite to the set destination with the present position of the vehicle as a reference and has a line of sight looking down over the road map so that a part of the road map surrounding the present position of the vehicle can be viewed in an extended scale form and the remaining part of the road map remote from the present position and nearer to the set destination can be viewed in a gradually reduction scale form.

Apparatus and method for navigating vehicle to destination using display

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Zama, Japan

Yoshitaka Yatsugi