Automobile navigation apparatus

Abstract

An automobile navigation apparatus, that has a rewritable recording medium and capability to updates the map data base by obtaining latest map data, records the map data in the recording means and comprises updating data acquisition means that acquires updated data of a map to which updating procedure is added, an information interpreting means that interprets the updating procedure information, and a map data updating means that searches over said map data base and updates said map data base on the basis of the results of such interpretation and manages the map data by using attributions that indicates additional information of the map elements which are composed into a table as the records thereof so that the row record of the table is classified by the attribution which indicates the additional information of the map element.

1 . A navigation apparatus comprising;
 a map database including map data stored in a rewritable recording unit;   an acquisition unit acquiring update data based on which the map data will be updated; and   a map data management unit updating and retrieving the map data stored in the map database based on the update data required by the acquisition unit, wherein   in the map data management unit, the map data are tables classified based on attributions indicative of additional information added to unit map records, the tables are divided based on frequency of updating the unit map records, and the map data are updated per each unit map record.   
   
   
       2 . The navigation apparatus as claimed in  claim 1 , wherein, in the map data management unit, each divided table has an index of which update timing will be changed by validating or invalidating the index based on the frequency of updating the unit map records included in the divided tables. 
   
   
       3 . The navigation apparatus as claimed in  claim 1 , wherein in the map data management unit, the divided tables are classified into: frequency-updated facility tables including facility data for restaurants; and infrequency-updated facility tables including facility data for public facilities.