1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a route search device, and more particularly to a route search device that is installed on a mobile unit and is operable to obtain facility information from an outside thereof, a method of making a search for a route, information providing device and method, and a route search system.
2. Description of the Related Art
A vehicle-mounted device, such as a car navigation system, which offers a route guidance makes a search for a route to a facility as a destination selected by a user, from a map database stored in the vehicle-mounted device. The map database includes facility information as well as map information. The facility information is created or prepared by each manufacturer. When the database needs to be updated, a recording medium in which new map information is recorded is provided to the vehicle-mounted device. However, when the map information is updated using the recording medium, the map information stored in the recording medium may not be the latest map information any longer. Also, since there is a limit to the capacity of the recording medium in which data can be recorded, it is not always possible to update all the information that needs to be updated.
Owing to the proliferation of the Internet, it has been proposed to find and retrieve a facility as a destination from a website, for example, and cause the vehicle-mounted device to obtain the result of the retrieval and make a search for a route to the facility.