Optimal Control of Automobiles for Fuel Economy

Abstract

This paper describes an application of dynamic programming to determining optimal driver control of an automobile for fuel economy. The objective function is provided by a simulator that uses vehicle performance maps derived from statistical analysis of road data collected by the authors. One dynamic program controls acceleration as a function of time subject to constraints on speed, acceleration, and distance covered. Another controls acceleration and gearshift subject to constraints on speed, acceleration, and time required to shift gears. Results are presented for acceleration to a given cruising speed, driving over hills while achieving a given average speed, and driving from one stop sign to another.

Optimal Controls of Vehicle Trajectories in Fleet Management Using V2I Information

“…Since 1980s, several pioneer studies [8] [9] have been conducted to investigate the underlining principle of optimal driving with an objective of minimizing fuel consumption. Detailed vehicle dynamics was modeled while terrain variation of highway was also considered.…”

“…This formulation neglects the detailed vehicle dynamics model in previous studies [8] since our application is focused on driving guidance at the tactical level. However, it is convenient to add the vehicle acceleration model in the application of detailed vehicle control [6].…”

The role of operational research in green freight transportation

“…-Micro-level : At the micro-level, the main question is how to optimally drive a vehicle on a given road segment, the answer to which lies in making optimal decisions about acceleration and speed as a function of time of travel. Some very interesting work has been carried out in the 1980s, including those by Hooker et al [68] and Hooker [67], who used optimal control and dynamic programming to find optimized driving profiles to maximize fuel economy. The optimal control problem described in [67] assumes that the rate f (v, a) of fuel consumption of a vehicle depends on the speed v at which the vehicle moves and the acceleration rate a, subject to a maximum valueā(v).…”

A Real-Time Multiobjective Optimization Algorithm for Discovering Driving Strategies

“…In addition, they mainly use dynamic programming (DP) methods to find the driving strategies. Similarly to modelbased approaches, they optimize either a weighted sum of the fuel consumption and the traveling time (see, e.g, Hooker, Rose, and Roberts 1983;Monastyrsky and Golownykh 1993;Hellstrom et al 2009), or the fuel consumption only while considering the traveling time as a constraint (see, e.g., Johannesson, Pettersson, and Egardt 2009;Hellstrom, Aslund, and Nielsen 2010).…”