Communications: electrical – External condition vehicle-mounted indicator or alarm – Highway information
Reexamination Certificate
2000-06-19
2002-01-01
Wu, Daniel J. (Department: 2632)
Communications: electrical
External condition vehicle-mounted indicator or alarm
Highway information
C340S991000, C340S993000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06335693
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information exchange system for exchanging information between a road-side communication unit and a vehicle-mounted communication unit in a traffic information system.
2. Description of the Related Art
As an information exchanging technology for exchanging information between a radio communication equipment mounted on a traveling vehicle and a radio communication equipment having narrow communication region on the road, which later radio communication equipment is installed on the road-side, there have been methods to realize bidirectional communication between the road-side radio communication equipment which will be occasionally referred to as “road-side unit”, and the vehicle-mounted radio communication equipment which will by occasionally referred to as “vehicle-mounted unit”, by providing a vehicle detector disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. Heisei 6-96387, optical receiver for a high speed data transmission disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. Heisei 6-276157, TDMA network protocol structure for reader-transponder communication disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. Heisei 6-61937.
In Japan, it has been started an information service
In Japan, it has been started an information service called VICS (Vehicle Information and Communication System) for mainly transmitting a traffic related information from the road-side unit to the vehicle-mounted unit. In VICS, a narrow region radio communication, a radio wave beacon system and an optical beacon system are employed and a wide region radio communication, an FM multiplex system is employed.
As a vehicle-mounted unit adapted for VICS, various types of equipment, such as a VICS receiver unit disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. Heisei 9-133535, for example, have been put into practice. Regularly updated traffic related information, such as traffic-jam information, travel information, accident information, construction information and so forth, is transmitted to the vehicle. Amongst, the optical beacon system utilizes the vehicle detector disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. Heisei 6-96387 and includes information communication function from the vehicle-mounted unit to the road-side unit. Currently, studies have been in progress to transmit destination information and travel time information of the vehicle from the vehicle-mounted unit to the road-side unit.
By using a narrow region road-vehicle communication, such as the VICS, the traffic related information can be transmitted to the vehicle. However, in the currently available service, the information to be transmitted to the vehicle is limited to the traffic related information. It has been considered that a system for improving convenience of a vehicular driver by transmitting a service information of service providers along the traveling road, such as restaurant, gasoline station, shop, in addition to or in place of the traffic related information.
However, in the narrow region road-vehicle communication, since a period, in which the vehicle passes the communication region, is limited, an amount of information to be transmitted to the vehicle is limited. Therefore, it becomes necessary to certain selection of service information to be provided in order to establish a system which can provide practically useful service information.
In the conventional system providing the traffic related information, in consideration of a certain range around the beacon, traffic information relating to roads within that range is picked up and transmitted to the vehicle. A selection range is varied depending upon kind of the road in such a manner that traffic information of greater distance for the road of greater importance. As set forth above, a viewpoint from the road is dominant for the traffic information. Therefore, the information to be provided is uniform for all of vehicles mounting the radio communication units.
On the other hand, concerning the information of the service providers along the road, amount of information becomes greater for providing information of content of services more accurately. On the other hand, while the traffic information is the information commonly required for all drivers of the vehicles, content of service information to be desired or required for each individual driver is different. Therefore, if manner of selection of information as being conventionally taken in the traffic information is used as is, it is possible that the information desired or required by the driver cannot be provided appropriately.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention has been worked out in view of the problems set forth above. Therefore, it is an object of the present invention to provide information exchange system which permits a service provider to transmit information concerning a service content to a traveling vehicle.
Another object of the present invention is to provide an information exchange system which can transmit a service information edited depending upon a demanded condition set by a user on a vehicle side, in order to effectively use a communication capacity.
A further object of the present invention is to provide an information exchange system which can vary detail degree or preference of information to be provided depending upon a positional relationship between the service provider and the vehicle.
A still further object of the present invention is to provide an information exchange method realizing a road-side unit or a vehicle-mounted unit constituting the information exchange system, or said information exchange system per se, which can achieve at least one of the foregoing objects.
According to one aspect of the present invention, an information exchange system comprises:
a vehicle-mounted unit mounted on a vehicle;
a road-side unit providing information to the vehicle-mounted unit using a road-vehicle radio communication;
the vehicle-mounted unit including receiving means for receiving information transmitted from the road-side unit through a radio communication and transferring means for transferring at least a part of a content of the received information to a vehicular occupant;
the road-side unit including storage means for storing information to be transmitted to the vehicle-mounted unit and transmitting means for transmitting information to the vehicle-mounted unit through the radio communication;
the storage means of the road-side unit for storing at least information relating to a service provider where a service is provided at the location thereof; and
the road-side unit further including editing means for editing information stored in the storage means on the basis of a relative position between the service provider and a communication region of the transmitting means and generating an edited information to be transmitted from the transmitting means.
In the preferred construction, the vehicle-mounted unit may further include setting means for permitting the vehicular occupant to set information and second transmitting means for transmitting the set information to the road-side unit through the radio communication;
the road-side unit may further include second receiving means for receiving information transmitted from the vehicle-mounted unit through the radio communication and parsing means for paring the received information; and
the editing means of the road-side unit may perform editing process by using at least one of the relative position and a result of parsing by the parsing means.
The information relating to the service provider stored the storage means of the road-side unit may be a plurality of information obtained with respect to a particular service provider, which the plurality of information can be edited by the editing process of the editing means.
The storage means of the road-side unit may store at least information relating to a plurality of service providers and kind information for respectively specifying kind of the plurality of servic
Iino Takayuki
Sato Yoshihito
Shima Takeshi
Shojima Hiroshi
Takahashi Kazunori
Hitachi , Ltd.
Kenyon & Kenyon
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