Patent ID: 7536258
Filing Date: 2009-05-19
Classification: G01C,G08G

Abstract:
1. An information providing method for providing information to an occupant of a vehicle, the method comprising the steps of: detecting position information on the vehicle with information equipment installed in the vehicle; accumulating, as a travel information history, routes of the vehicle obtained from the detected position information in the manner of transition among nodes; predicting a destination of the vehicle by referring to a route along which the vehicle has traveled to the current time and to the accumulated travel information history, when detecting the occurrence of a given event; and providing information regarding the predicted destination to the occupant via the information equipment, wherein in the predicting step, a destination of the vehicle is predicted by referring to transition among nodes accumulated as the travel information history and a series of nodes from a departure of the vehicle to a current position, wherein in the predicting step, a number of nodes is increased by using previous nodes starting from a current node in reverse chronological order, and a series of nodes with which an amount of data of transition among nodes accumulated as the travel information history exceeds a predetermined value are used to predict a destination of the vehicle.