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Advanced driver assistance systems like cooperative adaptive cruise control (CACC) are designed to exploit information provided by vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and/or infrastructure-to-vehicle (I2V) communication systems to achieve desired objectives such as safety, traffic fluidity or fuel economy. In a day to day traffic scenario, the presence of unknown disturbances complicates achieving these objectives. In particular, CACC benefits in terms of fuel economy require the prediction of the behavior of a preceding vehicle during a finite time horizon. This paper suggests an estimation method based on actual and past inter-vehicle distance data as well as on traffic and upcoming traffic lights. This information is used to train a set of nonlinear, autoregressive (NARX) models. Two scenarios are investigated, one of them assumes a V2V communication with the predecessor, the other uses only data acquired by on-board vehicle sensors.

It is well known that driver behavior can affect fuel consumption to a large extent hence modifying it can lead to reasonable reduction in the magnitude of 10 to 20%. However, it is also known that effects of training are short lived and therefore many authors and companies suggest the use of monitoring systems, sometimes called eco-driver, which allow recognizing opportunities for reduction. V2V is an emerging technology which has been widely studied especially for safety applications. In terms of fuel consumption, there has also been a significant effort for methods directed to coordinate the movement of vehicles, especially of trucks, to improve fuel consumption by platooning [1].

The proposed vehicle structure with an integrated-starter-generator (ISG) and the possible change of the net voltage offers substantial opportunities for energy and thus fuel saving at several levels or increased dynamical performance. However, the arrangement of two power sources - combustion engine and the ISG - brings more complexity in the system and makes it necessary to control the power flow of both sources, which has to be done by an energy management system. This paper describes possible changes in the powertrain setting and a systematic approach for the design of an energy management system without using heuristic design rules. Measurement results on a dynamical test bench for the FTP-75 emission test cycle confirm the increased fuel economy and an adequate battery charge level.

Adaptive cruise control (ACC) systems allow a safe and reliable driving by adapting the velocity of the vehicle to velocity setpoints and the distance from preceding vehicles. This substantially reduces the effort of the driver especially in heavy traffic conditions. However, standard ACC systems do not necessarily take in account comfort and fuel efficiency. Recently some work has been done of the latter aspect. This paper extends previous works for CI engines by incorporating a prediction model of the surrounding traffic and a simplified control law capable for real time use in experiments. The prediction model itself uses sinusoidal functions as the traffic measurements often show periodic behavior and is adapted in every sample instant with respect to the predecessor's velocity. Furthermore, the controlled vehicle is forced to stay within a specific inter-vehicle distance corridor to avoid collisions and ensure safe driving.