Patent ID: 7542844

Claim:
A traffic situation prediction apparatus for predicting a traffic situation, said apparatus having a base generation unit for generating the bases by making a principal component analysis for the necessary time of a plurality of road sections in the past, comprising: a feature space projection unit for projecting the necessary time of the plurality of road sections at present to a feature space having said bases as the axes to obtain a current projection point; a neighboring projection point retrieval unit for retrieving a projection point in the neighborhood of said current projection point based on a projection point trajectory that is a sequence of projection points of projecting the necessary time of said plurality of road sections in the past with said bases; a projection point trajectory trace unit for tracing said projection point trajectory starting from the projection point in the neighborhood of said current projection point for a time width between the present time and the prediction target time to obtain the projection point; and an inverse projection unit for inversely projecting the projection point traced by said projection point trajectory trace unit to calculate the predicted value of the necessary time of said plurality of road sections.