Patent Application
20060129311
Not Applicable.
Not Applicable.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to vehicle navigation systems, and more specifically, to interfacing with an remote navigation server for retrieving route guidance directions to a destination address.
2. Description of the Related Art
Traditional vehicle navigation systems utilize an on-board navigation device that contains in a database of the geographic map data within its on-board memory and a processor for determining route guidance directions. These systems utilize the map data stored on-board in its memory for generating the directions. Additional geographical areas or updated map data may be added to the on-board navigation memory via a CD or other transferable storage medium. However, this requires that the on-board navigation device have a large amount of memory to store the map data.
Other navigation systems utilize an off-board navigation server for supplying map data to the in-vehicle navigation device via a wireless connection. The map data is retrieved from the off-board navigation server and is provided to the in-vehicle navigation module. In systems that use speech recognition to communicate between the user and from the in-vehicle navigation device, vocabulary map data is stored in in-vehicle navigation device's memory. However, this requires that a very large amount of memory is required to store the vocabulary map data for all potential destination addresses for a plurality of geographical areas.
The present invention has the advantage of decreasing the amount of memory required to store voice templates for a plurality of geographical locations on an in-vehicle navigation module by utilizing an off-board navigation server to store the voice templates where respective voice templates are retrieved from the off-board navigation server to an in-vehicle navigation module in response to geographical descriptors orally input to the in-vehicle navigation module by the user.
In one aspect of the present invention, a method is provided for generating a destination address in response to a plurality of oral inputs by a user. The user is prompted to orally input a primary geographical descriptor of the destination address to the in-vehicle navigation module. Primary geographical utterance data is generated in response to an oral input by the user. The primary matching voice templates stored in the in-vehicle navigation module are compared with the primary geographical utterance data. The secondary voice templates associated with the secondary geographical descriptors within the primary geographical descriptors are retrieved from the remote navigation server. The secondary geographical utterance data is generated in response an oral input by the user. The stored secondary voice templates are compared with the secondary geographical utterance data. The destination address is generated in response to matching voice templates. The destination address is provided to a remote navigation server for calculating route guidance directions.
The in-vehicle navigation module 11 includes a controller 12 for controlling the communication of data between a user 22 and the remote navigation server 26. The in-vehicle navigation module 11 further includes a transceiver 14 for broadcasting the destination address orally entered by the user to the remote navigation server 26. The transceiver 14 also receives map data in the form of voice templates from the remote navigation server 26 relating to each of the destination address descriptors entered. The in-vehicle navigation module 11 also includes a memory storage device 16 for storing voice templates. In the preferred embodiment, the memory storage device 16 is a secondary storage database having limited storage capacity while the navigation database 28 of the remote navigation server 26 is a primary storage database which includes a plurality of the voice templates for a plurality of geographical locations. The remote navigational database 28 may be integral to the navigation server 26 or may be a remote storage database.
The memory storage device 16 is of sufficient capacity to permanently store voice templates of primary geographical descriptors. In the preferred embodiment, the primary geographical descriptors include state names and city names. Voice templates of secondary geographical descriptors such as street names and street address numbers are stored in the remote navigational database 28, although the city names may be stored in the voice templates of secondary geographical descriptors within the remote navigation database 28. Furthermore, the memory storage device 16 may be of a sufficient capacity to store voice templates of both primary and secondary geographical descriptors of the most frequently visited locations. This alleviates the need for the in-vehicle navigation module 11 to repetitiously retrieve voice templates for those places that are often frequented. The controller 12 may maintain an on-going and up-to-date list of a predetermined number of destination addresses most frequently traveled to. The controller 12 may also allow the user 22 to enter a set number of destination addresses that the user may desire to maintain in the memory storage device 16.
The in-vehicle navigation module 11 includes a voice recognition software system 24 such as IBM's ViaVoice™. Alternatively, other voice recognition software may be used. The voice recognition software allows voice-input commands to be input by the user 22. Selections are input in the form of utterances to the in-vehicle navigation module 11 and a voice recognition software routine is applied to the utterance for comparing the utterance to the voice templates for determining the selection as spoken by the user 22. The voice recognition software also generates verbal output commands in the form of prompts for requesting the user to input a descriptor of the destination address.
Choices for selection of the descriptor of the destination address may be displayed to the user 22 via a navigation display screen 18. The navigation display screen 18 includes a display screen such as a LCD screen for visually displaying the potential choices or the route guidance directions to the user 22. Alternatively, the navigation display screen 18 may include a plurality of contact switches or a touch screen for making selections in a menu-style system.
In the preferred embodiment, a wireless communication device such as a cellular phone 25 establishes a gateway 27 to the internet 23 for providing a connection between the transceiver 14 of the in-vehicle navigation module 11 and the a transceiver 21 of a remote navigation server 26. A wireless communication protocol such as Bluetooth™ may further be used to establish a communication link between the mobile phone and the transceiver 14 of the in-vehicle navigation module 11. Alternatively, the transceiver 14 of the in-vehicle navigation module 11 may establish a direct wireless connection to the transceiver 21 of the remote navigation server 26.
The remote navigation server 26 includes a microcontroller such as a microprocessor for calculating route navigation directions based on the in-vehicle navigation module's current location. Detailed map data is stored in the memory of the remote navigation server and the desired destination. The microcontroller retrieves the map data based on the descriptors of the destination address entered by the user 22 and calculates route guidance directions in response the in-vehicle navigation module's location and the entered destination address. By utilizing the memory of the remote navigation device for storing voice templates in cooperation with a high speed processor of the controller 12 for remotely calculating route guidance directions, lower costs can obtained by not having to integrate high capacity storage devices and high speed processors within the in-vehicle navigation module 11. Furthermore, to minimize the downloading time of the voice templates transmitted between the off-vehicle navigation device 11 and the remote navigation server 26, phonetic representations are utilized. Phonetic representations include symbols each representing one or more words. For example, a street named “Diamond St” may be represented by a diamond symbol as opposed to downloading each letter of the word “Diamond”. Downloading the phonetic representation of voice templates not only minimizes the amount of data to be downloaded, but the processing and downloading time is expedited as well.
In step 36, a determination is made whether voice templates containing street names for the destination “city” are locally stored in the memory of the in-vehicle navigation module. The street names voice templates for a respective destination “city” includes voice templates for all known streets within the destination “city” as already identified. If the street names voice templates are already stored locally in the memory of the in-vehicle navigation module, then the user is prompted by the in-vehicle navigation module to enter a destination “street” in step 39. If the street names voice templates are not locally stored in the memory of the in-vehicle navigation module, then a message is output to the user to wait while the street names voice templates are retrieved from the remote navigation server in step 37. In step 38, a connection is made from the in-vehicle navigation module to the remote navigation server via the mobile phone for retrieving the street names voice templates associated with the destination “city”. The street names voice templates for the destination “city” are retrieved from the memory of the off-board navigation device and are downloaded to the in-vehicle navigation module via the mobile phone connection. The user is then prompted to enter the destination “street” in step 39. In step 40, the in-vehicle navigation module receives an utterance identifying a destination “street” orally input by the user and applies a voice recognition routine for the utterance. A comparison is made between the utterance and the street names voice templates. In step 41, a determination is made whether voice templates containing street variations and associated street address numbers for the destination “street” is locally stored in the memory of the in-vehicle navigation module. If the street address numbers voice templates for all destination street variations are stored locally, then all possible streets having a same street base-name as the destination “street” is made available to the user to select from in step 43. For example, the speech recognition device may identify a plurality of streets within a city having a same basename. Each street is then verbally communicated to the user with a respective selection number from which to choose from.
If the street address numbers for each destination street variation is not stored locally, then the user is prompted to wait while a connection is made to the off-board navigation device. Voice templates associated with the destination street address numbers for all destination street variations are retrieved and downloaded to the in-vehicle navigation module in step 42. In step 43, one or more variations of the destination “street” are provided to the user and the user is prompted to select from the list. In step 44, the in-vehicle navigation module receives an utterance input by the user identifying the selected destination “street” and a voice recognition routine is applied to the utterance. In step 45, the in-vehicle navigation module prompts the user to enter the destination street address “number” for the selected destination “street”. In step 46, the in-vehicle navigation module receives the utterance identifying the destination street address “number” and a voice recognition routine is applied to the utterance. A comparison is made between the utterance and the street address number voice templates. In step 47, the connection is made to the remote navigation server and the destination address (i.e., state, city, street, and street address) is provided to the off-board navigation device along with the current location. The current location may be retrieved by any known positioning method such as satellite positioning, a gyroscope, or dead reckoning system. In step 48, the remote navigation server calculates the route guidance directions based on the current in-vehicle navigation module's location and the destination address. In step 49, the route guidance directions are downloaded to the in-vehicle navigation module and output to the user.
Alternatively, an origin address may be specified in a same manner as is shown for determining the destination address. The origin address may be the current location or any other desired location.
From the foregoing description, one ordinarily skilled in the art can easily ascertain the essential characteristics of this invention and, without departing from the spirit and scope thereof, can make various changes and modifications to the invention to adapt it to various usages and conditions.
