Energy saving and safe driving assistance system for light vehicles: Experimentation and analysis

This paper presents an EDAS (Eco-Driving Assistance System) to render a light vehicle low fuel consuming while being safe. A fuel consumption modeling, associated to a speed/gear optimization module, is proposed and used to compute the optimal speed profile and gear ratio to inform the driver in order him to eco-drive. An HMI module is presented and the driver behavior is analyzed face to the indications given by this HMI: are the optimal trajectories easy to be followed? Are the HMI outputs understandable and accepted by the driver? Does this HMI information improve the way of driving in terms of safety, low consumption and comfort? Several experimental results obtained with a prototype vehicle and several drivers are presented in order to evaluate the quality of this EDAS. The analysis deals with the gain obtained for the safety (speed overlaps, headway spacing, speed while approaching a road curve), consumption and covering distance aspects, by comparing a driving without any HMI and a driving with the use of the HMI with a given driver (several drivers have tested this EDAS for the analysis). The experimental results show that this kind of EDAS can save until around 10% of gasoline and more than 50% speed overlaps (compared to the legal speed).