Patent ID: 8566025

Claim:
A method of selecting a travel route using a navigation terminal, the method comprising: receiving broadcasting signals by the navigation terminal; extracting message information formed in a hierarchical structure and including traffic information from the received broadcasting signals, the traffic information including current traffic congestion status information and prediction traffic congestion status information; inputting a first position value and a second position value corresponding to first and second positions; searching for travel routes between the first and second positions; dividing the travel routes from the first position to the second position into a plurality of individual road links; calculating a time required to travel each road link along the travel routes from the first position to the second position based on at least one of the current traffic congestion status information and the prediction traffic congestion status information, the prediction congestion status information including a prediction average link speed, a prediction travel time, a congestion tendency and additional information for each road link; calculating a total time required to travel all of the road links for the travel routes from the first position to the second position; and selecting, via a controller on the navigation terminal and without user interaction, a travel route that has a smallest total amount of time to travel from the first position to the second position among the calculated travel routes, wherein a particular time required to travel a particular road link among the plurality of individual road links is estimated using the prediction traffic congestion status information at a future time, wherein the future time is calculated by adding the calculated time required to travel each road link from the first position to a road link immediately before the particular road link along the travel routes from the first position to the second position, and wherein calculating the time required to travel each road link calculates a prediction time of a first road link belonging to the first position using the current traffic congestion status information and calculates a prediction time of other road links along the travel routes using the prediction traffic congestion status information.