JPH08138194A - Road traffic information system - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE: To provide a road traffic information system which enables a driver in the course of driving to read immediately not only traveling time from present location to a destination but also the degree of congestion of some extent on his route. CONSTITUTION: This system is constituted so that link traveling time about the route from the present location A to the destination B is determined on the basis of time information required for a vehicle to pass through a section for every section finely fractionated by considering definite distance to be a unit, and it is displayed as a message saying 'It takes 61min from A to B', and simultaneously, the distance capable of being covered in the unit time is determined successively from the present location, and the route from the present location A to the destination B is displayed discriminately by changing displayed contents (e.g. displaying color) in accordance with the degree of the coverable distance.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a road traffic information system for providing a driver with traffic information such as traffic congestion on a road, and more particularly from a base station via a transmission device arranged at regular intervals on the road. The present invention relates to a road traffic information system that provides traffic information to an on-vehicle terminal device while receiving the traffic information and displaying the traffic information on a display.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, as a road traffic information system of this type, as shown in FIG. 4, a spot-like spot is provided between a beacon (roadside station) 41 and a vehicle 42 arranged on the road at intervals of several 100 m to several km. Forming a wireless area 43 of about 60 m,
2. Description of the Related Art A road-to-vehicle information system is known that provides a driver with traffic information such as traffic congestion by constructing an intermittent communication path between roads and vehicles. Here, as traffic information, static information that does not change with time, such as current position information and road guidance information, and dynamic information that changes with time, such as traffic jam information, regulation information, and travel time information. There is.

Of the dynamic information, travel time information is time information expected to be required for the vehicle to travel a route from a certain point (for example, the current location) to another point (for example, the destination). Therefore, it changes with time depending on various conditions such as road congestion and regulation. Here, a conventional example in which the travel time information is displayed on the display of the vehicle-mounted terminal device in the road-vehicle information system will be described. First, on the system center (base station) side, for each section subdivided by a certain distance, the time required for a vehicle to pass through the section is actually measured and collected by a known method, and each section The travel time on the route between nodes (intersections) is calculated based on the time information for each node, and the travel time information for each route from that node to a certain range of nodes for vehicles passing through the node is placed at that node. It is transmitted from the beacon that was sent.

On the other hand, on the in-vehicle terminal device side, as shown in FIG. 5, a map including the current location (node where the vehicle has passed) and the destination is displayed on the (A) display, and the current location to the destination is displayed on this map. The route is identified by a specific color, and the travel time for that route is displayed in characters based on the received travel time information. (B) Each node is distinguished by the color of the road and received. On the basis of the travel time information, the travel time is displayed for each road in characters having the same color as the road display color, or both are displayed in a mixed manner. Further, not only the travel time but also the traffic jam information is given as the traffic information, so that the traffic jam information is displayed on a separate screen.

FIG. 6 and FIG. 7 show a concrete example in the case of using the Metropolitan Expressway, for example. On the display of the in-vehicle terminal device, as shown in FIG. 6 (A), menus classified according to information categories such as route guidance, traffic congestion information, travel time, etc. are displayed. Select by pressing your finger against the part. By selecting the route guidance menu, as shown in FIG. 6B, for example, a plurality of routes from "Shibuya" to "Ginza" are displayed in different colors and the travel time for each route is displayed. Is displayed. When the congestion information menu is selected, as shown in FIG. 7A, "congestion" and "congestion"
The section in which is generated is displayed in a different color. In addition, when the travel time menu is selected, FIG.
As shown in (B), a route (hereinafter referred to as a link) between junctions (branch points) is displayed in a different color for each link, and a travel time for each link is displayed.

[0006]

However, in the above-mentioned conventional road-to-vehicle information system, the configuration is such that the travel time from the current location to the destination is displayed based on the travel time information regarding each route between the nodes transmitted from the beacon. Since it was possible to estimate the congestion degree to some extent from the travel time, it was difficult to immediately understand the congestion degree from the travel time, resulting in a burden on the driving driver. . In addition, travel time information and traffic congestion information (congestion level) are different information and have no correlation,
Since different screens were displayed as shown in FIGS. 7 (A) and 7 (B), it was necessary to perform a screen switching operation in order to see each information, and that operation was troublesome for the driver while driving. Was becoming.

The present invention has been made in view of the above problems, and its purpose is to provide a driver who is driving not only the travel time from the current location to the destination but also a certain degree of congestion on the route. It is to provide a road traffic information system that can be read immediately.

[0008]

In a road traffic information system according to the present invention, a transmission device is arranged on a road at regular intervals, and a vehicle passes through each of the intervals subdivided by a constant distance. A base station that collects the time information required to perform and provides time information about the route from that point to a point within a certain range to a vehicle passing through the point via a transmitter located at the point. The time information transmitted from the transmitter is received, and based on this time information, the travel time is calculated and displayed for the route from one point to another point within a certain range. An in-vehicle terminal device that sequentially obtains the distance that can be traveled per unit time from one point, and changes the display content according to the degree of the distance that can be traveled to identify and display the route from one point to another point. And it has a configuration which includes a door.

[0009]

In the road traffic information system having the above structure, the base station collects time information required for passing the vehicle for each of the subdivided sections, and collects the information on the time when the vehicle has passed one point (current position). The time information regarding the route near the point is given through the arranged transmitting device. On the other hand, when the in-vehicle terminal device receives the time information transmitted from the transmission device, the in-vehicle terminal device obtains and displays the travel time required to travel to another point (destination) from this time information, and further displays the unit time on that route. The travelable distance is obtained, and the display content (for example, display color) is changed and displayed in accordance with the degree of the travelable distance.

[0010]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS An embodiment of the present invention applied to, for example, a road-to-vehicle information system will be described below in detail with reference to the drawings. The present invention is not limited to the application to the road-to-vehicle information system, but detects the current position of the traveling vehicle, displays the own vehicle position on the road map, and guides the driver to the destination. It can be applied to general road traffic information systems such as in-vehicle navigation systems.

FIG. 2 is a schematic configuration diagram of the road-vehicle information system. In FIG. 2, the system center (base station) 21
Collects static information (for example, road name, intersection name, facility name, etc.) near each beacon installation location for beacons 22 that are transmission devices arranged at regular intervals on the road, and collected by the road administrator. Dynamic information (eg traffic jam information,
Regulatory information, travel time information, etc.). Beacon 2
2 transmits each piece of information supplied from the system center 21 in a predetermined cycle at any time, and a section of several tens of meters before and after the information is transmitted by the vehicle 2
Communication is intermittently performed with the vehicle 23 in a short time when the vehicle 3 passes. The beacon 22 has an advantage that the whole country can be covered with one set of frequencies and stable propagation can be obtained.

On the other hand, the vehicle 23 is equipped with an in-vehicle terminal device 24, and when passing through the spot-like wireless area 28 by the beacon 22, the antenna 25 receives each information transmitted from the beacon 22. When the information received by the antenna 25 is supplied to the in-vehicle terminal device 24, the processing unit 26 processes and processes the received information and displays the information requested by the driver's operation on the display 27. The display 27 is a touch panel to improve the operability of the driver when performing menu selection and the like.

Travel time information, which is one of the dynamic information given from the system center 21 to the in-vehicle terminal device 24, will now be described. As this travel time information,
In the present embodiment, for each section subdivided by a certain distance, the time information required for the vehicle to pass through the section is collected for each beacon 22 from the installation location for a certain range of routes. Time information for each section is provided for each beacon 22. The image of providing the travel time is shown in FIG. In FIG. 3, for example, a
For example, the section is 1 minute and the section b is 2 minutes. The vehicle traveling time of each section varies depending on the congestion situation of the section.
The travel time information for each section is transmitted for each beacon 22 together with other traffic information regarding the vicinity of the location.

On the other hand, in the in-vehicle terminal device 24, the processing unit 26 calculates the link travel time from the current location to the destination based on the received travel time information for each section. Specifically, in FIG. 3, the current location is point A, the destination is location B, and the link travel time from location A to location B can be calculated by using travel time (1 minute) + travel time in section b. (2 minutes) + ... + s Travel time for each section (1 minute) is added, such as travel time for each section. Thereby, the link travel time of 61 minutes from the point A to the point B can be obtained.

After obtaining the link travel time from the point A to the point B, the processing section 26 then determines a certain time as a unit time and how far the vehicle can travel in this unit time. For example, when the fixed time is 10 minutes, in FIG. 3, the section a to the section e is 10 minutes, the section f to the section k is next, and the section 1 to the section m is 10 minutes next. In this way, the travelable distance per unit time to the point B is sequentially obtained. Note that the end of the unit time may not always correspond to the section break, as in the section 1 to the section m, and in such a case, a time close to 10 minutes is taken before and after that.

When these arithmetic processes are completed, the processing unit 2
6 performs processing for displaying the calculated link travel time and the travelable distance per unit time on the display 27. Specifically, as shown in the display example in Fig. 1, the link travel time is, for example, "61 minutes from A to B." ”Is displayed, and for the road identification display, the travelable distance per unit time is displayed as one segment. That is, as shown in FIG. 1, in the correspondence relationship with FIG. 3, the road from the section a to the section e is filled with the same color, and the next section f to the section k is filled with another color. The road color is displayed separately for each unit time (10 minutes).

In this way, by displaying the route from the present location to the destination by color by using the travelable distance per unit time as one segment, in general, per unit time, such as section a to section e. It can be judged that a place where the travelable distance is long can be normally driven without congestion, and a place where the travelable distance per unit time is short such as m section to n section and o section to p section is expected to be crowded. Therefore, the congestion degree of the route to the destination and the travelable distance per unit time can be easily determined, and the visibility is excellent.

In this color-coded display, a greenish color is displayed as a display color of a section that can be normally traveled (that is, section a to section k), and a section that is considered to be congested (that is, section n to section). By using the red system color as the display color of the (p section) and the orange system color as the display color of the section (that is, the 1 section to the m section and the q section to the r section) which is considered to be slightly congested, Since these are colors that are generally used for displaying traffic congestion, the driver can immediately determine the congestion status on the route to the destination.

In the above embodiment, the case where the unit time is set to 10 minutes has been described, but the present invention is not limited to this, and the driver may arbitrarily set it. By doing this, the situation at the time of traveling (congestion degree, estimated time to the destination, distance, etc.)
Since the unit time can be set in accordance with the above, it is possible to grasp the congestion degree and the mileage per unit time according to the current situation, and it is possible to set the display content that matches the driver's feeling.

In the above embodiment, the case of color display has been described, but the present invention is also applicable to monochrome display. In the case of monochrome display, for example, as shown in FIG. In the case of color display, dot pattern display, n-p section are shaded pattern display, and l-m section and q-r section are diagonally striped pattern display to identify the route to the destination. Similarly, the congestion degree and the possible traveling distance per unit time can be immediately determined.

[0021]

As described in detail above, according to the present invention, the time information required for a vehicle to pass through a section is collected for each section subdivided by a certain distance. While giving time information about the route from that point to a point within a certain range to a vehicle passing through the point through a transmitter arranged at the point, the point based on the transmitted time information To the other points within a certain range, the travel time is calculated and displayed, and the distance that can be traveled per unit time is calculated in order from one point, and the display contents are changed according to the degree of the traveled distance. Since the route to other points is identified and displayed, it is possible to easily determine not only the link travel time to the destination but also the congestion degree and the travelable distance per unit time on the route to the destination. It becomes Rukoto.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a diagram showing an example of display contents according to the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a schematic configuration diagram of a road-to-vehicle information system to which the present invention is applied.

FIG. 3 is a diagram showing an image of providing travel time.

FIG. 4 is an image diagram of a road-to-vehicle information system.

FIG. 5 is a diagram showing a display example of travel time in a conventional example.

FIG. 6 is a diagram (part 1) showing a conventional specific example.

FIG. 7 is a diagram (part 2) showing a conventional specific example.

[Explanation of symbols]

 21 system center 22 beacon 24 vehicle-mounted terminal device 25 antenna 26 processing unit 27 display

Claims (3)

[Claims] 1. A transmission device arranged at a fixed interval on a road, and, for each section subdivided into units of a fixed distance, collecting time information required for a vehicle to pass through the section, and A base station that gives the time information regarding a route from a point to a point within a certain range to a vehicle passing through the point via the transmitter arranged at the one point; and the base station transmitted from the transmitter. Receiving time information, based on this time information, the travel time is obtained and displayed for the route from the one point to another point within the certain range, and it is possible to travel in the unit time with the certain time as a unit. An in-vehicle terminal device that sequentially obtains various distances from the one point, changes display contents according to the degree of the travelable distance, and identifies and displays a route from the one point to the other point. Road traffic information system, characterized in that. 2. The road traffic information system according to claim 1, wherein the in-vehicle terminal device changes the color of the route for each distance unit according to the degree of the travelable distance and displays the identification. 3. The road traffic information system according to claim 1, wherein the vehicle-mounted terminal device is configured so that the unit time can be arbitrarily set.