US 8,805,611 B2Granted

Neutral zones for navigation

AssigneeGeneral Motors Corporation

InventorsTodd E. Damon, Mathew Cucuzella

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Abstract

The described method and system provide for treatment of certain areas as neutral zones during GPS navigation to avoid unnecessary off-route notifications and route recalculation. A GPS unit determines whether the user has entered a geographic region designated as a neutral zone, and does not provide the user with off-route notifications while the user is within the neutral zone. Not providing off-route notifications may be implemented by the GPS device by considering the user to be within the calculated route while the user is within a neutral zone, or by disabling off-route notifications (and route recalculation) while the user is within the neutral zone. The neutral zone may be defined by a set of GPS coordinates. The neutral zone may further be polygonal, and the size of the neutral zone may be based on the accuracy of the GPS device.

Claims18

Dependent claims

A method for satellite-based navigation using a satellite-based navigation device having a processor, comprising:

receiving, at the device, input from a user corresponding to an intended destination;
calculating, using the device, a set of navigation instructions constituting a defined route from a starting point to the intended destination;
determining, using the device, after the calculating, that the user has entered a neutral zone geographic region at an intermediate position along the defined route, wherein the neutral zone geographic region includes a portion of the defined route and one or more vehicle stopping locations proximate to the portion of the defined route and does not include beginning and end points of the defined route, wherein the one or more vehicle stopping locations corresponds to at least one of the group consisting of:
a rest stop, a gas station, a restaurant, and lodging;
and
suppressing, at the device, route recalculation while the vehicle remains in the neutral zone geographic region;
wherein neutral zone geographic regions are defined based on defined routes such that it is possible for a part of a roadway that is included within a neutral zone geographic region of a first defined route to not be included within any neutral zone geographic region of a second defined route.

4 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.