Information providing apparatus and system

Abstract

An information providing system is disclosed. The system includes a management apparatus having a database storing facility-event information of facilities or events, and a portable apparatus communicatable with the management apparatus. The portable apparatus sets each place, at which a movement stop time exceeds a prescribed staying time, as a stay place. The management apparatus estimates that a living area of a user of the portable apparatus is a collective area covering all of the stay places of the user. The management apparatus sets the collective area as the search scope, extracts the facility-event information matching the search scope from the database, and transmits the extracted facility-event information to the portable apparatus.

What is claimed is: 
     
         1 . An apparatus mounted to a vehicle for providing information about a facility or an event as facility-event information, the apparatus comprising:
 an information storage that includes a database, wherein the database stores facility-event informations for a plurality of facilities or a plurality of events by associating the facility-event informations with respective location data of the facilities or the events; and   a present position acquisition unit that acquires present position information indicating present position of the vehicle,   a search scope setting unit that sets a search scope parameterized by the location data, based on the present position information acquired by the present position acquisition unit;   an information extraction unit that extracts, from the information storage, the facility-event informations that match the search scope set by the search scope setting unit;   an information indicating unit that provides a user, who drives the vehicle, with at least one of the facility-event informations extracted by the information extraction unit; and   a stay place setting unit that
 measures, based on the present position information acquired by the present position acquisition unit, a movement stop time defined as a period of time from when movement of the apparatus stops to when the movement of the apparatus restarts, and 
 sets a stay place of the user based on the present position information and the movement stop time of the vehicle, wherein the stay place is a place at which the movement stop time exceeds a prescribed stop time, 
 sets a daily-visiting place of the user based on an acquisition date and time of the present position information, wherein the daily-visiting place is the stay place at which the vehicle is periodically parked, 
   wherein:   based on respective location data corresponding to the stay places and the daily-visiting places set by the stay place setting unit, the search scope setting unit
 estimates that a living area of the user is a collective area covering all of the stay places of the user, 
 estimates that a daily-living area of the user is a collective area covering all of the daily-visiting places of the user, 
 estimates that a non-daily-living area is the living area of the user except the daily-living area, and 
 sets the search scope based on the present position information acquired by the present position acquisition unit, by
 setting the daily-living area as the search scope when the present position of the vehicle is within the daily-living area of the user, and 
 setting the non-daily-living area as the search scope when the present position of the vehicle is within the non-daily-living area of the user.