A Review of Sensor Technologies for Automotive Fuel Economy Benefits 12-02-01-0001
This also appears in
SAE International Journal of Connected and Automated Vehicles-V128-12EJ
This article is a review of automobile sensor technologies that have the potential to enhance fuel economy. Based on an in-depth review of the literature and demonstration projects, the following sensor technologies were selected for evaluation: vehicular radar systems (VRS), camera systems (CS), vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) systems, and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) systems.
V2V and V2I systems were found to have the highest merit in improving fuel economy over a wide range of integration strategies, with fuel economy improvements ranging from 5 to 20% with V2V and 10 to 25% for V2I. However, V2V and V2I systems require significant adoption for practical application which is not expected in this decade.
Numerous academic studies and contemporary vehicular safety systems attest VRS as more technologically mature and robust relative to other sensors. However, VRS offers less fuel economy enhancement (~14%). Vehicular CS are relatively technologically mature and promise fuel economy enhancement but require integration with other sensor technologies for robust performance.
