Abstract: In communications control apparatus and method for an automotive vehicle, a buffer enabling quantity by which data of the requested content is enabled to be buffered into a receiving buffer during a vehicular run on the traveling scheduled route is calculated using a traveling time and a communication speed; and a capacity of the receiving buffer is set according to a calculated result of the buffer enabling quantity calculation described above and an upper limit value of the receiving buffer capacity, data on a requested content being downloaded onto the receiving buffer whose capacity is set.

Abstract: A map information providing apparatus includes a detecting unit 13 and a searching part 21. In operation, the part 21 searches a target object in accordance with a position of a user's vehicle detected by the detecting unit 13. A positional relationship analyzing part 22 analyzes a positional relationship between the target object and the user's vehicle. A reduced scale calculating part 23 calculates a reduced scale of the map information on the basis of the positional relationship analyzed by the part 22 and a display format of an onboard monitor 3. Further, the apparatus picks up the map information with the calculated reduced scale allowing the vehicle and the target object to be displayed on the monitor 3 simultaneously.

Abstract: A sighting direction detecting device including a TV camera which is disposed to face a human being and picks up an image of light invisible to human beings, a first illuminator which is disposed in a coaxial system with the TV camera and illuminates a human's eye-ball portion with light which is invisible to human beings, a second illuminator which is disposed at a different place from the first illuminator and illuminates the human's eye-ball portion with light which is invisible to human beings, a first calculator for calculating an equation of a line passing the pupil center position of the eye-ball, an equation of a line passing the reflected-light position of the first illuminator and an equation of a line passing the reflected-light position of the second illuminator on the basis of the image which is picked up by the camera, a second calculator for calculating the center position of a cornea ball on the basis of the equation of the line passing the reflected-light position of the first illuminator and