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A newly designed opposed free piston internal combustion hydraulic power generator is proposed in this paper. The pressure of the hydraulic power output of the proposed hydraulic power generator is substantially constant and the hydraulic flow rate is variable. The frequency of free piston changes from zero to maximum in response to the hydraulic flow rate and each gas cycle is always performed under an optimum working condition independent of the power output. If the proposed hydraulic power generator is combined with a variable displacement hydraulic motor, it will be possible to obtain excellent torque-speed characteristic, easy operation, and superior fuel economy. A fundamental test apparatus was constructed and tested in this work. The test apparatus uses an opposed free piston, two stroke cycle, direct fuel injection, and compression ignition engine.

Recently, the role of ECU(Electronic Control Unit) on vehicles has been becoming more important year by year in order to meet the requirements for safety and the environmental matters. Particularly, the ECU of Engine Management Systems has been becoming indispensable in order to realize high performance, low fuel consumption and low exhaust emission. Therefore, the size of software has also been increasing, and been becoming more complex and complicated. As the ECU software size becomes large and complex, the verification and validation of the software by using the current development method has been becoming more difficult. Especially it has been becoming more difficult to validate the Real-time property of the software. The Real-time property means whether the execution of the software is in time for the deadline which is decided on the software design.

We aimed to develop a new vehicle device for improving driver performance. In human-subject experiments using a driving simulator we found that optical flow in the near region might cause inaccurate steering, while optical flow in the far region helped to improve the perception of the driving direction, thereby reducing the driver’s workload. Based on these findings, a triangular-shaped occluding board was developed for reducing optical flow in the near region, and installed in an actual vehicle. The device improved the driver’s head stability and steering stability, suggesting that driving performance can be enhanced by controlling visual information.

Lane Centering Control System (LCCS) is a lateral Advanced Driving Assistance System (ADAS) with low acceptance. One of the main reasons is that the centering trajectory can’t satisfy different drivers, which is more obvious in the curve condition. So LCCS adaptive to different drivers needs to be designed. The trajectory planning module is an important part for LCCS. It generates trajectory according to the road information for the vehicle control module to track. This paper uses road information obtained from the scenario established in Prescan, and the trajectory planning method proposed can generate trajectories for different drivers in the curve condition. To achieve the goal, this paper proposes a trajectory planning method which contains lateral path planning and longitudinal speed planning. Firstly, the overall strategy of “road equidistant segments division” is used to describe the road information.

Lane Keeping Assistance System (LKAS) is a typical lateral driver assistance system with low acceptance. One of the main reasons is that fixed parameters cannot satisfy individual differences. So LKAS adaptive to driver characteristics needs to be designed. Driver Steering Override (DSO) process is an important process of LKAS. It happens when contradiction between driver’s intention and system behavior occurs. As feeling of overriding will affect the overall experience of using LKAS, the design of DSO characteristics is worthy of attention. This research provided an adaptive design scheme aiming at DSO characteristics for LKAS by building Driver Preference Model (DPM) based on simulator test data from preliminary experiments. The DPM was to represent the relationship between driver characteristics indices and driver preferred system characteristics indices. So that new drivers’ preference can be predicted by DPM based on their own daily driving data with LKAS switched off.

Gasoline includes various kinds of chemical species. Thus, the reaction model of gasoline components that includes the low-temperature oxidation and ignition reaction is necessary to investigate the method to control the combustion process of the gasoline engine. In this study, a gasoline combustion reaction model including n-paraffin, iso-paraffin, olefin, naphthene, alcohol, ether, and aromatic compound was developed. KUCRS (Knowledge-basing Utilities for Complex Reaction Systems) [1] was modified to produce paraffin, olefin, naphthene, alcohol automatically. Also, the toluene reactions of gasoline surrogate model developed by Sakai et al. [2] including toluene, PRF (Primary Reference Fuel), ethanol, and ETBE (Ethyl-tert-butyl-ether) were modified. The universal rule of the reaction mechanisms and rate constants were clarified by using quantum chemical calculation.

In the recent years, the interaction between human driver and Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS) has gradually aroused people’s concern. As a result, the concept of personalized ADAS is being put forward. As an important system of ADAS, Lane Keeping Assistance System (LKAS) also attracts great attention. To achieve personalized LKAS, driver lane keeping characteristic (DLKC) indices which could distinguish different driver lane keeping behavior should be researched. However, there are few researches on DLKC indices for personalized LKAS. Although there are many researches on modeling driver steering behavior, these researches are not sufficient to obtain DLKC indices. One reason is that most of researches are for double lane change behavior which is different from driver lane keeping behavior. The other reason is that the researches on driver lane keeping behavior only provide model structure and rarely discuss identification procedure such as how to select suitable data.

This paper deals with energy-saving and its thermal advantage in a hydraulic power steering system. Currently, hydraulic power steering systems are commonly used for passenger cars, and reduction of the driving energy of the pump under non-steering condition is important for energy-savings of the system to improve fuel economy. This paper describes a newly designed energy-saving pump and its experimental results. The energy-saving pump has lower driving torque with the advantage of lower heat generation in the power steering system. In addition, relationships between the pump driving energy and oil temperature in the system are analyzed for the basis of the mathematical model, which accurately predicts the pump driving torque.

A Steer-by-wire (SBW) system, which has no mechanical linkage, is expected to support the driver even in critical situations so as to improve collision safety and cockpit design flexibility. We have shown the effectiveness of driver assistance using an active steering control integrated with active braking control.[1] This is a case of normal driving without any vital component failures. The SBW system failure, however, can lead to an unsafe driving situation. A highly redundant design reduces the SBW failures but complicates its design and increases cost, volume and weight. This paper proposes a new fault-tolerant architecture to cope with the SBW failure. This is based on an integrated control by SBW, active braking, and driving torque distribution. A feasibility study is made using a driving simulator experiment during front obstacle avoidance under failed SBW.

Electric power steering systems (EPS) greatly improve fuel performance over conventional hydraulic power steering systems, and therefore being increasingly adopted. However, it is very important to evaluate the mechanical noise and to identify the correct noise source in steering systems, because an EPS has vibration sources such as at the motor gear reducer, manual gears and intermediate joints. In order to identify the noise source, a technique based on time-frequency analysis using the wavelet transform (WT) has been focused on which uses a mother wavelet (MW) that is derived mathematically. The measured signal is adopted as the MW. In this study, applying this method to time-varying signals, a new concept of the Wavelet Instantaneous Correlation Value (WICV) is discussed and is used to identify the noise source.

Sliding intermediate shaft of Electric Power Steering (EPS) system is used for torque transmission from steering wheel or motor and buffering reverse input from tire. Polyamide coating material with good sliding properties is treated in the sliding types of intermediate shaft. Conventionally, sliding types of intermediate shaft with polyamide coating have been used in vehicle interior. On the other hand, extension of applied area to engine room is needed. However, in high temperature conditions, there is concerns about increase of friction coefficient and wear volume of polyamide by deterioration of sliding properties of polyamide. Therefore, improvement of sliding properties of polyamide in high temperature is necessary. In this research, we examined sliding properties of polyamide blended with metal stearate in high-temperature to use polyamide in high temperature compared to conventional environment. As resin material, we used polyamide 610 blended with metal stearates.

Lane Keeping Assistance (LKA) system is a very important part in Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS). It prevents a vehicle from departing out of the lane by exerting intervention. But an inappropriate performance during LKA intervention makes driver feel uncomfortable. The intervention of LKA can be divided into 3 parts: intervention timing, intervention process and intervention ending. Many researches have studied about the intervention timing and ending, but factors during intervention process also affect driver feelings a lot, such as yaw rate and steering wheel velocity. To increase driver’s acceptance of LKA, objective and subjective tests were designed and conducted to explore important indices which are highly correlated with the driver feelings. Different kinds of LKA controller control intervention process in different ways. Therefore, it’s very important to describe the intervention process uniformly and objectively.