Patent ID: 8924141

Claim:
An information providing apparatus which is mounted on a mobile unit, the information providing apparatus comprising: an information communication acquiring unit that acquires roadside information or information about another mobile unit by means of road/vehicle communication or vehicle-to-vehicle communication; an operating state detecting unit that detects an operating state of the mobile unit; an information providing deciding unit that decides whether to provide driving support information or not based on the information acquired by the information communication acquiring unit and vehicle side information indicating the operating state detected by the operating state detecting unit, and commands to output the driving support information at a first output timing; a route guidance unit that calculates a route up to a destination of the mobile unit and commands to output route guidance information at a second output timing; an information providing output unit that outputs voice information about the route guidance information and voice information about the driving support information; and an Human Machine Interface (HMI) output control unit that performs the following operations when the information providing deciding unit makes a decision that the driving support information is to be provided: determining a time by which the voice information about the driving support information is to be provided regardless of the second output timing of the voice information about the route guidance information, deciding whether a conflict exists between the first and second output timings of the voice information about the driving support information and the route guidance information, respectively, by determining if the output of the voice information about the driving support information responding to the command from the information providing deciding unit would overlap with the output of the voice information about the route guidance information responding to the command from the route guidance unit, and if a conflict is decided to exist, controlling the output of voice information from the information providing output unit in a manner as to prevent the output of the voice information about the driving support information from overlapping with the output of the voice information about the route guidance information, while ensuring that the output of the voice information about the driving support information occurs no later than the determined time.