Guide system

Abstract

A guide system gives sight-seeing guidance for various sight-seeing objects located within a wide area without an interval of pause. The guide system includes guide data storage wherein guide data, for showing objects located along the travelled road, and for showing streets and other objects in the local area, is classified into types and stored. A guide information output section outputs guidance information pertaining to an object, located by search, having sight-seeing interest. A position detector detects and traces the current position. Further, the guide system has a plurality of search mechanisms, each of which searches only within a specific category of guide objects and only within an area defined at least in part by the current position, as identified by the current position detector. The guide system searches for and extracts information for an object from the guide data storage and outputs the information pertinent thereto. It is possible to limit each search to guide objects within a given classification and to search them in order of priority. The guide system extracts the highest priority object first by use of one or more of the search mechanisms and then extracts additional objects in the same order of priority and outputs guidance information therefor, to eliminate any interval of pause in which no guidance is output.