Vehicle Route Velocity Optimization Across Road Grade Changes
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Solution Overview
Problem
Aerodynamic losses, influenced by vehicle velocity and head wind velocity, impact energy consumption in both fossil fuel and electric vehicles, necessitating optimization strategies to balance energy consumption and travel time.
Innovation Solution
A system and method that processes vehicle route information to detect changes in road grade, dividing the route into segments and performing local optimization to adjust vehicle velocity based on road grade and external data, followed by global optimization to generate an optimized vehicle route profile with reduced energy consumption.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If vehicle velocity is increased to reduce travel time, then productivity improves, but aerodynamic losses increase causing energy consumption to worsen
Solution Approach 1:
The route is divided into multiple segments based on road grade changes, allowing different velocity optimization strategies for each segment. This enables the system to reduce velocity in uphill segments to save energy while maintaining higher velocities in downhill or flat segments to preserve productivity.
Solution Approach 2:
The system dynamically adjusts vehicle velocity based on real-time road grade conditions, wind velocity, and segment characteristics. Rather than maintaining a constant velocity, the optimization continuously adapts velocity profiles to match changing environmental and topographical conditions, balancing energy consumption and travel time.
2Use of energy by moving object
If vehicle velocity is decreased to reduce aerodynamic losses, then energy consumption improves, but travel time increases worsening productivity
Solution Approach 1:
The system applies different velocity optimization strategies to different route segments based on their specific characteristics. In uphill segments with high energy consumption, the system locally reduces velocity to save energy, while in downhill or flat segments, it maintains or increases velocity to compensate for travel time losses, achieving overall energy reduction without significant productivity impact.
3Manufacturing precision
If the route is divided into more segments for detailed optimization, then manufacturing precision of the optimization improves, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The route is segmented at road grade changes, creating manageable optimization units. This segmentation provides sufficient precision for energy optimization by capturing the main topographical variations, while avoiding excessive segmentation that would unnecessarily increase computational complexity and processing requirements.
Data Source
AI summary
A method of optimizing energy consumption includes receiving vehicle route information, generating a baseline vehicle route profile including a baseline energy consumption and a baseline travel time, and processing the baseline vehicle route profile by detecting one or more changes in a road grade. For each detected change in the road grade, the method includes triggering a breakpoint to divide the baseline vehicle route profile into a plurality of segments, each segment in the plurality of segments having a baseline vehicle velocity, and for each segment in the plurality of segments, performing local optimization to generate a modified vehicle velocity. The method also includes generating an updated vehicle route profile and performing global optimization on the updated vehicle route profile to generate an optimized vehicle route profile, the optimized vehicle route profile having a different energy consumption than the baseline energy consumption.