Subliminal optimal longitudinal vehicle control for energy efficient driving

In this paper an Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS) supporting the driver to achieve an energy efficient driving strategy is proposed. State of the art driver assistance systems for this purpose either take over full control of the vehicle longitudinal dynamics or only provide information to the driver and do not directly influence the vehicle dynamics. We propose an assistance system which performs the control task in parallel with the driver. The system adapts the driver inputs in an energy optimal manner under the constraint the influence is not perceptible for the driver. A control framework is proposed which allows a real-time capable implementation of the ADAS. The concept is validated in a small experiment on a driving simulator based on a test scenario consisting of a 2.5 km straight road with varying speed limits. The results show the real-time capability of the control framework and indicate a significant reduction of the fuel consumption.