Driving More Efficiently - The Use of Inter-Vehicle Communication to Predict a Future Velocity Profile

Fuel-efficient driving is difficult in unknown or complex environments. To aid the driver with this task, we present a novel method of tactical route optimization by calculating a short-term fuel-reduced velocity profile. This profile is based on knowledge of location-dependent velocity profiles that are collected by the vehicles over time and shared with other vehicles. To determine a fuel-efficient velocity profile, we first split the planned route into segments. We cluster the historical velocity profiles within each segment using a Dynamic Time Warping algorithm, obtaining classes of velocity profiles and their probabilities. We construct a transition graph between velocity profile classes from adjacent segments and calculate the most probable path through the next segments ahead. This path represents the most likely future velocity profile under the assumption that the driver behaves like previous drivers on the same segment. Given the constraints defined by this profile, we calculate the fuel-reduced velocity profile with help of a shortest path algorithm in a vehicle-specific fuel-consumption graph. First results in an urban environment indicate possible fuel savings of about 8.3% compared to the most probable profile.