Method and system to calculate historical traffic data
View Patent ↗A system for a vehicle navigation accurately calculates travel times between locations and serves a vehicle driver request for the shortest time route. A navigation server compiles data of common road segments between two locations that are contained in route requests and subsequently calculates travel time between the two locations. When subsequent route requests contain further information pertaining to the same locations, the navigation server updates the travel time. Consequently, the navigation server can calculate the travel times of different routes from the same source vehicle location and destination location. When a vehicle driver requests directions from the vehicle's current location to a destination, the navigation server then provides directions for the shortest time route to the vehicle driver.
1. A computer-implemented method for estimating travel times between vehicle locations by a vehicle navigation system, the method comprising:
receiving, by a navigation server, a first route request from a telematics unit wherein the first route request contains a destination, a first time-of-day and a first location of a vehicle;
receiving, by a navigation server, a second route request from the telematics unit wherein the second route request contains the destination, a second time-of-day and a second location of the vehicle;
calculating, by a navigation server, a travel time between the first location of the vehicle and the second location of the vehicle using a difference between the first time-of-day and the second time-of-day;
averaging, by the navigation server, the calculated travel time with other calculated travel times between the first location of the vehicle and the second location of the vehicle to render an averaged result; and
storing, by the navigation server, the averaged result as an estimated travel time between the first location of the vehicle and the second location of the vehicle in an electronic database.
2. The method according to claim 1 , wherein the averaging is based on one or more time-of-day categories, wherein the estimated travel time is associated with one of the time-of-day categories.
3. The method according to claim 1 wherein the telematics unit records the first time-of-day, the first location of the vehicle, the second time-of-day, and the second location of the vehicle.
4. The method according to claim wherein the vehicle navigation system further comprises:
one or more software applications implemented by the navigation server to calculate the current travel time and update the stored travel time; one or more electronic databases that store the stored travel time and a repository of different route directions from the first location of the vehicle to the second location of the vehicle; and
a wireless communication network that provides a communication link between the telematics unit installed in the vehicle to the navigation server.
5. The method according to claim 2 , wherein the time-of-day categories are selected from the group consisting of rush hour, non-rush hour, weekday, weekend, holiday, seasonal, summer winter, fall, spring, day, night, morning, afternoon, evening, and night.