Engineering Papers⌕ Search

SEARCH · Engineering Papers

Results for “vehicle data”

Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 109 records · Page 6

Automated Vehicle Feasibility Study

This study collected automated vehicle (AV) performance data on public roadways in Athens, Ohio. The route for the study contained a combination of roads with different functional classifications, conditions, annual average daily traffic, and ownership responsibilities for maintenance and repair. Preparation for the public road deployment was done in a controlled environment at Transportation Research Center’s SMARTCenter, a dedicated AV test facility in East Liberty, Ohio. Researchers analyzed data and extracted insights relevant for both AV developers and infrastructure owners and operators. The study found that rural environments offer a unique set of roadway features such as hills and curves, which can challenge the driving behavior of an AV. Rural regions can also contain a large number of low-traffic gravel roads that lack pavement markings, which appear to be a crucial infrastructure element for operation of current generation AVs. Similarly, the presence of well-maintained lane lines along curves can influence the AV’s roadway departure tendencies. The study found that curvature-related behavior of an AV is also influenced by driving speed on the roadway segment. Such findings were consistent regardless of the time of day along the route or season of data collection. However, commentary about AV performance in active adverse weather cannot be made, as this is still an area of active research.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

Simulating the Autonomous Future: A Look at Virtual Vehicle Environments and How to Validate Simulation Using Public Data Sets

The rapid evolution of autonomous vehicles (AVs) has exposed the need for fast-paced development and testing processes of a variety of perception, planning, and control algorithms. To expedite development, the AV industry and researchers leverage virtual vehicle environments to simulate a range of test scenarios that may otherwise be costly or difficult to conduct on a real test track. However, the various virtual environments may have different results depending on the fidelity of various simulation features, such as vehicle dynamics, sensor simulation, and environment recreation. Herein, this tutorial article examines a proposed framework for constructing, parameterizing, and validating a virtual vehicle environment using an existing AV data set. First, an overview of several open source and commercially available simulation tools, including their associated workflows, for scene and scenario creation is presented. Next, various open AV data sets are examined to inform the data set selection for the validation framework. Then, an example workflow of recreating a real-world scene from the selected data set in a simulation tool with various emulated sensors parameterized to match the data set is demonstrated. Finally, an example AV-perception algorithm is subjected to data streams from virtual and real-world environments and suggested metrics for analyzing the results are discussed.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Data Files for 'The 2030 National Charging Network: Estimating U.S. Light-Duty Demand for Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure'

This data set includes modeling results from The 2030 National Charging Network: Estimating U.S. Light-Duty Demand for Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure, including region-specific (i.e., national, state, and core-based statistical area cities and towns) electric vehicle supply equipment port count requirements in 2025 and 2030 for multiple scenarios described in the study.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

Data Files for “The 2030 National Charging Network: Estimating U.S. Light-Duty Demand for Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure"

This data set includes modeling results from “The 2030 National Charging Network: Estimating U.S. Light-Duty Demand for Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure” including region-specific [i.e., national, state, and core-based statistical area (CBSA)—cities/towns] electric vehicle supply equipment (EVSE) port count requirements in 2025 and 2030 for multiple scenarios described in the study. Please cite as: Wood, E., B. Borlaug, M. Moniot, D.-Y. Lee, Y. Ge, F. Yang, and Z. Liu. 2023. The 2030 National Charging Network: Estimating U.S. Light-Duty Demand for Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure. Golden, CO: National Renewable Energy Laboratory. NREL/TP-5400-85654.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

Detailed Simulation Datasets Quantifying U.S. DOE VTO/HFTO R&D Benefits Across Light- to Heavy-Duty Vehicles

For more than 20 years, Argonne National Laboratory’s Vehicle & Mobility Systems Department has assessed how R&D investments by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Transportation Technologies Office and Alternative Fuels and Feedstocks Office affect vehicle energy use and cost. The analyses are performed using Autonomie, Argonne’s full-vehicle simulation tool for energy consumption, performance, and cost. The study covers five time frames ranging from present day through 2050, with more than 30 vehicle classes and applications (10 light duty and >20 medium and heavy duty), as well as six powertrain configurations (conventional, start-stop, hybrid electric vehicle, plug-in hybrid electric vehicle, battery-electric vehicle, and fuel cell electric vehicle) and five fuels (gasoline, diesel, natural gas, hydrogen, and electricity). Low and high technology uncertainty scenarios have been considered to capture a realistic range of outcomes. The resulting datasets include the assumptions used (i.e., efficiency, $/kWh), vehicle-level data (power, energy, weight, and cost), and outputs such as energy consumption, manufacturer’s suggested retail price, and total cost of ownership. These data are critical to stakeholders working in transportation, technology assessment, and long-term R&D planning.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

Community Public Mobility Using On-Demand, Low-Speed Electric Vehicles: A Case Study in Downtown St. Louis, Missouri

Legacy fixed route transit systems designed to serve commuters struggle to provide efficient and effective service for short neighborhood trips and for population groups unable to access and egress transit stops using active modes (e.g., elderly, disabled). Neighborhood on-demand transit (ODT) services using low-speed electric vehicles (LSEV) are an innovative technological solution that can help fill this gap in service (e.g., short, high-frequency trips) for diverse populations and trip types. This study evaluated user characteristics and travel behavior for a neighborhood ODT service (using LSEVs) in downtown St. Louis, Missouri using responses from a community survey (n=244), ridership data, and vehicle trajectory information. A comparative analysis between neighborhood ODT, fixed route transit, and transportation network companies (TNC) was also conducted from the perspectives of total travel time, cost, and greenhouse gas emissions. Ultimately, the goal of the analysis was to motivate and inform holistic public mobility systems where different services are optimized to meet specific community needs. Findings indicate that the neighborhood ODT was effective at reaching diverse populations (elderly (20%), lower income (27%), and households with limited access to private vehicles (34%)). ODT reduced total travel time by 32% compared to fixed route transit, produced 2.4 - 4.3 times less greenhouse gas emissions per passenger mile (compared to transit and TNCs), and was more affordable (free to users) than alternative options ($1 for transit, $10-12 for TNCs). Overall satisfaction rates were high, with 80% of respondents rating the service a 4 or 5 out of 5.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗

National Dataset of EV Charging Stations With Estimates of Load and Vehicle Throughput

Current data from the AFDC provide locations and many details about EV charging stations, but not estimates of their peak loads or the number of vehicles they can accommodate. This dataset will augment the AFDC charging station locations with estimates of transmission load and vehicle throughput based on engineering specifications of the chargers, charging patterns based on vehicle types, battery capacities, and user behavior.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

Community Public Mobility Using On-Demand, Low-Speed Electric Vehicles: A Case Study in Downtown St. Louis, Missouri

Legacy fixed route transit systems designed to serve commuters struggle to provide efficient and effective service for short neighborhood trips and for population groups unable to access and egress transit stops using active modes (e.g., elderly, disabled). Neighborhood on-demand transit (ODT) services using low-speed electric vehicles (LSEV) are an innovative technological solution that can help fill this gap in service (e.g., short, high-frequency trips) for diverse populations and trip types. This study evaluated user characteristics and travel behavior for a neighborhood ODT service (using LSEVs) in downtown St. Louis, Missouri using responses from a community survey (n=244), ridership data, and vehicle trajectory information. A comparative analysis between neighborhood ODT, fixed route transit, and transportation network companies (TNC) was also conducted from the perspectives of total travel time, cost, and greenhouse gas emissions. Ultimately, the goal of the analysis was to motivate and inform holistic public mobility systems where different services are optimized to meet specific community needs. Findings indicate that the neighborhood ODT was effective at reaching diverse populations (elderly (20%), lower income (27%), and households with limited access to private vehicles (34%)). ODT reduced total travel time by 32% compared to fixed route transit, produced 2.4 - 4.3 times less greenhouse gas emissions per passenger mile (compared to transit and TNCs), and was more affordable (free to users) than alternative options ($1 for transit, $10-12 for TNCs). Overall satisfaction rates were high, with 80% of respondents rating the service a 4 or 5 out of 5.

ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS↗

Vehicle Tracking with Crop-based Detection

End-to-end production of vehicle tracking data from video in real-time and with high accuracy remains a challenging problem due to the computational cost of object detection on each frame. In this work we present Tracking with Crop-based Detection, a method for speeding object tracking in constrained contexts (with stable cameras and relatively-predictable object motion) such as vehicle traffic monitoring. We leverage this context to provide a strong prior for object locations, which we use to 1.) boost detection speed by detecting objects only in regions corresponding to object priors on most frames and 2.) inform the selection of the detector output for each object. We evaluate Crop-based Detection as an extension to the KIOU object tracker (Crop-KIOU) on the UA-DETRAC dataset. The proposed tracker outperforms all other reported algorithms in terms of PR-MOTA, PR-MOTP, and mostly tracked objects on the UA-DETRAC benchmark, establishing a new state-of-the-art. Relative to tracking by detection with KIOU, Crop-KIOU achieves a 26% higher frame-rate and increases accuracy. Furthermore, Tracking with Crop-based Detection can be combined with frame skipping; we show a 149% increase in framerate relative to KIOU with no decrease in accuracy using this combination of methods.

Gloudemans, Derek↗

Deploying Traffic Smoothing Cruise Controllers Learned from Trajectory Data

Autonomous vehicle-based traffic smoothing con- trollers are often not transferred to real-world use due to challenges in calibrating many-agent traffic simulators. We show a pipeline to sidestep such calibration issues by collecting trajectory data and learning controllers directly from trajectory data that are then deployed zero-shot onto the highway. We construct a dataset of 772.3 kilometers of recorded drives on the I-24. We then construct a simple simulator using the recorded drives as the lead vehicle in front of a simulated platoon consisting of one autonomous vehicle and five human followers. Using policy-gradient methods with an asymmetric critic to learn the controller, we show that we are able to improve average MPG by 11% in simulation on congested trajectories. We deploy this controller to a mixed platoon of 4 autonomous Toyota RAV-4’s and 7 human drivers in a validation experiment and demonstrate that the expected time-gap of the controller is maintained in the real world test. Finally, we release the driving dataset [1], the simulator, and the trained controller at https://github.com/nathanlct/trajectory-training-icra.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

Systems and methods for vehicle coasting recommendation

A method for providing a coast recommendation for an operator of a vehicle, including receiving vehicle position data; determining a projected route; determining a first speed change position and a first speed change target speed; determining a first residual speed and a first residual speed position based at least in part on the first speed change position and the first speed change target speed; determining a first lower speed envelope; determining an overall lower speed envelope based at least in part on the first residual speed; determining an upper speed envelope; determining a target speed profile based at least in part on the first residual speed, the first residual speed position, the first lower speed envelope, and the upper speed envelope; determining a coast start point based at least in part on the target speed profile; and communicating the coast start point to the operator of the vehicle.

Aggoune, Karim↗

Scalable GPS Data Logging To Support Advanced Fleet Analysis

This highlight details the key takeaways from a project that utilized NLR's Fleet Research, Energy Data, and Insights (FleetREDI) data analysis pipeline. National Laboratory of the Rockies researchers developed and demonstrated low-cost, open-source Arduino data loggers with 3D-printed cases that are compatible with global navigational systems and built with components available ubiquitously worldwide, enabling cost-effective collection and analysis of fleet operational data. Validated on an overseas transit bus fleet, NLR analysis showed that, with sufficient charging opportunities, 90% of observed duty cycles could be accomplished by electric buses with no modifications to operations.

33 ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS↗

Charging needs for electric semi-trailer trucks

Battery-electric vehicles provide a pathway to decarbonize heavy-duty trucking, but the market for heavy-duty battery-electric semi-trailer trucks is nascent, and specific charging requirements remain uncertain. We leverage large-scale vehicle telematics data (>205 million miles of driving) to estimate the charging behaviors and infrastructure requirements for U.S. battery-electric semi-trailer trucks within three operating segments: local, regional, and long-haul. We model two types of charging - mid-shift (fast) and off-shift (slow) - and show that off-shift charging at speeds compatible with current light-duty charging infrastructure (i.e., =350 kW) can supply 35% to 77% of total energy demand for local and regional trucks with =300-mile range. Megawatt-level speeds are required for mid-shift charging, which make up 44% to 57% of energy demand for long-haul trucks with =500-mile range. However, demand shifts from mid-shift to off-shift charging as the range for battery-electric trucks increases and when off-shift charging is widely available. Finally, we observe geographic trends in charging demand, finding that local trucks have greater demand within urban areas, whereas long-haul trucks have more demand along rural interstate corridors. As the range for battery-electric trucks increases, we show that charging demand shifts from rural to urban locations due to observed vehicle dwell tendencies.

33 ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS↗

Charging Needs for Battery Electric Semi-Trucks

Battery-electric vehicles provide a pathway to decarbonize heavy-duty trucking, but the market for heavy-duty battery-electric semi-trailer trucks is nascent, and specific charging requirements remain uncertain. We leverage large-scale vehicle telematics data (>205 million miles of driving) to estimate the charging behaviors and infrastructure requirements for U.S. battery-electric semi-trailer trucks within three operating segments: local, regional, and long-haul. We model two types of charging; mid-shift (fast) and off-shift (slow), and show that off-shift charging at speeds compatible with current light-duty charging infrastructure (i.e., =350 kW) can supply 35 to 77% of total energy demand for local and regional trucks with =300-mile range. Megawatt-level speeds are required for mid-shift charging, which make up 44 to 57% of energy demand for long-haul trucks with =500-mile range. However, demand shifts from mid-shift to off-shift charging as the range for battery-electric trucks increases and when off-shift charging is widely available. Finally, we observe geographic trends in charging demand, finding that local trucks have greater demand within urban areas, whereas long-haul trucks have more demand along rural interstate corridors. As the range for battery-electric trucks increases, we show that charging demand shifts from rural to urban locations due to observed vehicle dwell tendencies.

ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS,ENERGY PLANNING, POLIC↗

AutonomieAI: An efficient and deployable vehicle energy consumption estimation toolkit

Here, this paper presents AutonomieAI, a novel toolkit designed for efficient energy estimation of vehicles across diverse trip scenarios, routes, and drive cycles, applicable to a broad range of vehicle powertrain technologies. It leverages state-of-the-art Machine Learning techniques to deliver real-time energy prediction of vehicles, enabling co-simulation with transportation level system tools and opening doors for large-scale optimization at city, network or national level. Benchmark results show that AutonomieAI achieves high accuracy, with an average percentage error below 2% for most powertrain types, and computational efficiency capable of processing over 10,000 trips per second. Applications of AutonomieAI have potential to offer the flexibility to assist in solving eco-routing problems, optimize for vehicle and powertrain selection, study charging decision behavior, and optimize for charging station placement. AutonomieAI is the result of large neural network based model architectures, trained on very large and unique high fidelity vehicle simulation data. It is lightweight, deployable, efficient and has accuracy comparable to specialized and complex physics based simulation softwares.

Autonomie↗

Charging Needs for Battery Electric Semi Trucks

Battery-electric vehicles provide a pathway to decarbonize heavy-duty trucking, but the market for electric trucks is nascent, and specific charging requirements remain uncertain. This paper summarizes methods and findings from Charging Needs for Electric Semi-Trailer Trucks [1] wherein we leverage large-scale vehicle telematics data (>205 million miles of driving) to estimate the charging behaviors and infrastructure requirements for U.S. battery-electric semi-trailer trucks within three operating segments: local, regional, and long-haul. We model two types of charging - mid-shift (fast en-route charging) and off-shift (slow depot charging) - and show that off-shift charging at speeds compatible with current light-duty charging infrastructure (i.e., =350 kW) can supply 35% to 77% of total energy demand for local and regional trucks with =300-mile range. Megawatt-level speeds are required for mid-shift charging, which make up 44% to 57% of energy demand for long-haul trucks with =500-mile range. However, the role of off-shift charging increases as the range for battery-electric trucks increases and when off-shift charging is widely available.

ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS↗

Assessing the National Off-Cycle Benefits of 2-Layer HVAC Technology Using Dynamometer Testing and a National Simulation Framework

Some CO2-reducing technologies have real-world benefits not captured by regulatory testing methods. This paper documents a two-layer heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) system that facilitates faster engine warmup through strategic increased air recirculation. The performance of this technology was assessed on a 2020 Hyundai Sonata. Empirical performance of the technology was obtained through dynamometer tests at Argonne National Laboratory. Performance of the vehicle across multiple cycles and cell ambient temperatures with the two-layer technology active and inactive indicated fuel consumption reduction in nearly all cases. A thermally sensitive powertrain model, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's FASTSim Hot, was calibrated and validated against vehicle testing data. The developed model included the engine, cabin, and HVAC system controls. Validation of component thermal models and engine efficiency ensured accurate thermal dynamics, fuel consumption, and two-layer benefit. The real-world benefit of the two-layer technology was calculated by simulating the validated powertrain model across a representative test matrix comparing performance with and without the two-layer system. Simulation across the test matrix revealed a real-world representative benefit of 0.0835%. Analysis of test matrix results at the regional level revealed the most benefit in cold climates and rural regions. Mean results across cycle length sensitivity simulations revealed a larger real-world benefit of 0.0872%. These benefit values can be considered a more accurate assessment of real-world technology performance. Future work is planned to explore the requisite number of drive cycles to ensure the full technology benefit is captured.

2-layer↗