US 7,003,397 B2Granted

Off-road trail recording method and apparatus for navigation system

AssigneeAlpine Electronics, Inc.

InventorsTatsuo Yokota, Andrew S. de Silva

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Abstract

An off-road trail recording method and apparatus for use with a navigation system for recording an off-road trail when a vehicle travels in an off-road area to safely return to the original road. The off-road trail recording is achieved without regard to on/off settings of the off-road trail recording function by the user. The navigation system automatically detects that the vehicle has left the road and starts recording the off-road trail in a background mode without display the off-road trail. When the user turns on the off-road trail recording function later, the navigation system prompts the user to decide whether the off-road trail recorded in the background should be recovered in a normal mode. The navigation system provides various means for recording the off-road trail with reduced resolution when the memory capacity is exhausted or insufficient.

Claims28

Dependent claims

An off-road trail recording method for navigation system, comprising the following steps of:

detecting whether a user or user's vehicle (hereafter “vehicle”) has left a road and entered an off-road area where no road segments data are available;
recording off-road trail data in a background recording mode without displaying the off-road trail in response to vehicle's travel in the off-road area when detecting that the vehicle has left the road;
prompting the user to select whether to recover or delete the off-road trail data recorded in the background recording mode indicating the off-road trail connecting the road left off and a current vehicle position when a normal recording mode is activated;
and
recording off-road trail data and displaying the off-road trail data on a screen of the navigation system in the normal recording mode in response to vehicle's travel in the off-road area;
wherein the background recording mode is activated automatically when detecting that the vehicle has left the road, and the normal recording mode is activated by the user by turning on an off-road trail recording function of the navigation system.

3 more elements

An off-road trail recording apparatus for navigation system, comprising:

means for detecting whether a user or user's vehicle (hereafter “vehicle”) has left a road and entered an off-road area where no road segments data are available;
means for recording off-road trail data in a background recording mode without displaying the off-road trail in response to vehicle's travel in the off-road area when detecting that the vehicle has left the road;
means for prompting the user to select whether to recover or delete the off-road trail data recorded in the background recording mode indicating the off-road trail connecting the road left off and a current vehicle position when a normal recording mode is activated;
and
means for recording off-road trail data and displaying the off-road trail data on a screen of the navigation system in the normal recording mode in response to vehicle's travel in the off-road area;
wherein the background recording mode is activated automatically when detecting that the vehicle has left the road, and the normal recording mode is activated by the user by turning on an off-road trail recording function of the navigation system.

3 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.