Patent Document ID: 10115309
Application ID: 14998218
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. A method for operating a vehicle navigation device to navigate to an available parking space, the method comprising the following acts: acquiring a plurality of journey data vectors each containing information about a speed, position data and a time of acquisition of the speed and the position data; establishing a feature vector at each time of acquisition of the plurality of journey data vectors, wherein the information about a current and a previous journey data vector is processed, wherein the feature vector comprises as feature components at least one item of speed information and one item of path information; classifying each feature vector, wherein a first traffic category, which represents a vehicle journey, or a second vehicle category, which represents parking space-seeking traffic, is assigned to each feature vector, and wherein a probability is established, which specifies the probability with which the first or the second traffic category is to be assigned to the feature vector; segmenting the feature vectors over the time profile of the established traffic categories, wherein there is a subdivision of the journey from the start of a search for available parking spaces to the last acquisition of a journey data vector into two segments in accordance with the determined traffic categories of the feature vectors; determining the start of the search based on a transition from a first of the two segments into a second of the two segments; determining a parking rate based on the determined start of the search, the parking rate reflecting a number of searches started per unit time; determining a probability of the available parking space based on the parking rate, and navigating the vehicle, via the vehicle navigation device, based on the determined probability of the available parking space.