Car Navigation System Using Genetic Algorithm Processor

The automobile industry has become a communication tool facilitating the movement of people as well as providing a means of transport. In particular, car navigational systems that support safe and comfortable driving are becoming more and more sophisticated. When a car navigation system was first put into practical use, its function was only to display maps using a CD-ROM. Later, however, technological progress made it possible to build various functions and services, such as voice guidance service and traffic congestion information displays, into car navigation systems. Generally, the main role of car navigation systems is a route search from a specified starting point to a final destination. General car navigation systems use the Dijkstra algorithm (DA) (Fujita, et al., 2003) for route search. Although the DA can obtain the shortest route between two points represented on a graph, it cannot obtain the shortest route within an allowable processing time when a problem’s scale becomes large. Moreover, the DA cannot search for a route that includes multiple unspecified transit points, or search for a route considering time spent at a transit point. aBstraCt