Ecological Vehicle Control on Roads With Up-Down Slopes

TLDR

Fuel consumption in vehicles is heavily influenced by road gradients, requiring optimal control inputs that consider terrain, vehicle dynamics, and fuel characteristics. This paper develops an ecological driving system for vehicles operating on roads with up‑down slopes. A nonlinear model‑predictive control scheme with a fast optimizer uses digital road maps and a fuel‑consumption model based on engine efficiency to compute slope‑aware control inputs, and the system is simulated on varied slope profiles. Simulations demonstrate that the eco‑driving system can significantly reduce fuel consumption, with the savings illustrated and analyzed.

Abstract

This paper presents a novel development of an ecological (eco) driving system for running a vehicle on roads with up-down slopes. Fuel consumed in a vehicle is greatly influenced by road gradients, aside from its velocity and acceleration characteristics. Therefore, optimum control inputs can only be computed through anticipated rigorous reasoning using information concerning road terrain, model of the vehicle dynamics, and fuel consumption characteristics. In this development, a nonlinear model predictive control method with a fast optimization algorithm is implemented to derive the vehicle control inputs based on road gradient conditions obtained from digital road maps. The fuel consumption model of a typical vehicle is formulated using engine efficiency characteristics and used in the objective function to ensure fuel economy driving. The proposed eco-driving system is simulated on a typical road with various shapes of up-down slopes. Simulation results reveal the ability of the eco-driving system in significantly reducing fuel consumption of a vehicle. The fuel saving behavior is graphically illustrated, compared, and analyzed to focus on the significance of this development.