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As a key component of in-vehicle intelligent voice technology, speech enhancement can extract clean speech signals contaminated by environmental noise to improve the perceptual quality and intelligibility of speech. It has extensive applications in the field of intelligent car cabins. Although some end-to-end speech enhancement methods based on time domain have been proposed, there is often limited consideration given to designing model architectures based on the characteristics of the speech signal. In this paper, we propose a new U-Net based speech enhancement framework that utilizes the temporal correlation of speech signals to reconstruct higher-quality and more intelligible clean speech.

As a critical technology for autonomous vehicles, high precise positioning is essential for automated container terminals to implement intelligent dispatching and to improve container transport efficiency. Because of the unstable performance of global positioning system (GPS) in some circumstances, an ultra wide band (UWB) positioning system is developed for autonomous trucks in an automated container terminal. In this paper, an asynchronous structure is adopted in the system, and a three-dimensional (3D) localization method is proposed. Other than a traditional UWB positioning system with a server, in this asynchronous system, positions are calculated in the vehicle. Therefore, propagation delays from the server to vehicles are eliminated, and the real-time performance can be significantly improved. Traditional 3D localization methods based on time difference of arrival (TDOA) are mostly invalid with anchors in the same plane.

Battery models are often applied to describe the dynamic characteristics of batteries and can be used to predict the state of the battery. Due to the process of charging and discharging, the battery heat generation will cause the inhomogeneity between inner battery temperature and surface temperature. In this paper, a novel battery impedance model, which takes the impact of the battery internal temperature gradient on battery impedance into account, is proposed to improve the battery model performance. Several experiments are designed and conducted for pouch typed battery to investigate the electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) characteristics with the artificial temperature gradient (using a heating plate). Experimental results indicate that the battery internal temperature gradient will influence battery EIS regularly.

To study the state of health (SOH) of the proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC), a novel hybrid method combining the advantages of both the model-based and data-driven methods is proposed. Firstly, the model-based method is proposed based on the voltage degradation model to estimate the variation trend, and three parameters reflecting the performance degradation are selected. Secondly, the data-driven (long short-term memory (LSTM)) method is presented to estimate the variation fluctuation. Moreover, the core step of the hybrid method is returning the results of the LSTM method to the power degradation model as the “observation” and modifying related parameters to improve the estimation accuracy. Finally, the sliding window method is applied to solve the problem of the data increase with the increase of the operating time. The results show that the power estimation is better than the current estimation for the SOH estimation.

Autonomous driving related technologies have become a hot topic in academia and industry. Planning control is one of the core technologies of autonomous driving, which is conducive to vehicles safe and efficient driving. This paper proposes a novel optimal speed control algorithm, which considers the power system's energy consumption, the speed limit on the road, and the safe distance of the vehicle in front. An optimal speed control model of “From battery to wheel” energy consumption is established by constructing a performance index function based on the best-fitting formula of motor power, motor speed and torque. Based on the optimal control principle, the fourth-order ordinary differential equation of the speed control model is established, based on the indirect adjoining approach, the speed control model under the restriction of the road speed limit and safe distance of the preceding vehicle is derived and the analytical expression is obtained.

With the popularity of automated vehicles, the future mixed traffic flow contains automated vehicles with different degrees of intelligence developed by other manufacturers. Therefore, simulating the interaction behavior of automated vehicles with varying levels of intelligence is crucial for testing and evaluating autonomous driving systems. Since the algorithm of traffic vehicles with various intelligence levels is difficult to obtain, it leads to hardships in quantitatively characterizing their interaction behaviors. Therefore, this paper designs a new automated vehicle test platform to solve the problem. The intelligent vehicle testbed with multiple personalized in-vehicle control units in the loop consists of three parts: 1. Multiple controllers in the loop to simulate the behavior of traffic vehicles；2. The central console applies digital twin technology to share the same traffic scenario between the tested vehicle and the traffic vehicle, creating a mixed traffic flow. 3.

As one of the key technologies in autonomous driving, the lateral planning module guides the lateral movement during the driving process. An integrated lateral planning module should consider the non-holonomic constraints of a vehicle, the optimization of the generated trajectory and the applicability to various scenarios. However, the current lateral planning methods can only meet parts of these requirements. In order to satisfy all the performance requirements above, a novel Potential Field (PF) based lateral planning method is proposed in this paper. Firstly, a PF model is built to describe the potential risk of the traffic entities, including the obstacles, road boundaries and lines. The potential fields of these traffic entities are determined by their properties and the traffic regulations. Secondly, the planning algorithm is presented, which comprises three modules: state prediction, state search and trajectory generation.

Cold start capability is one of remaining major challenges in realizing PEMFC (Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell) technology for automotive applications. Gas purge is a common and integral shutdown procedure of a PEMFC automotive in subzero temperature. A dryer membrane electrode assembly (MEA) can store more water before it gets saturated and ice starts to penetrate in the open pores of porous media, thus enhancing cold start capability of a PEMFC. Therefore, gas purge is always performed prior to fuel cell shutdown to minimize residual water in a PEMFC. In the hope of improving effectiveness of purge in a PEMFC vehicle, two important purge parameters are evaluated including purge time and energy requirement. In practice, an optimized gas purge protocol should be developed with minimal parasitic energy, short purge duration and no degradation of components. To conclude, the cold start capability and performance can be consolidated by proper design of gas purge strategies.

Fuel cell vehicles (FCV) have become a promising transportation tool because of their high efficiency, fast response and zero-emission. However, the cold start problem is one of the main obstacles to limit the further commercialization of FCV in cold weather countries. Many efforts have made to improve the cold start ability. This review presents comprehensive heating methods and influence factors of the research progress in solving the Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells (PEMFC) system cold start problems with more than 100 patents, papers and reports, which may do some help for PEMFC system cold start from the point of practical utilization. Firstly, recent achievements and goals will be summarized in the introduction part. Then, regarding the heating strategies for the PEMFC system cold start, different heating solutions are classified into self-heating strategies and auxiliary-heating heating depending on their heating sources providing approach.

A rapid path-planning algorithm that generates drivable paths for an autonomous vehicle operating in structural road is proposed in this paper. Cubic B-spline curve is adopted to generating smooth path for continuous curvature and, more, parametric basic points of the spline is adjusted to controlling the curvature extremum for kinematic constraints on vehicle. Other than previous approaches such as inverse kinematics, model-based prediction postprocess approach or closed-loop forward simulation, using the kinematics model in each iteration of path for smoothing and controlling curvature leading to time consumption increasing, our method characterized the vehicle curvature constraint by the minimum length of segment line, which synchronously realized constraint and smooth for generating path. And Differ from the path of robot escaping from a maze, the intelligent vehicle traveling on road in structured environments needs to meet the traffic rules.

Parallel-connected modules have been widely used in battery packs for electric vehicles nowadays. Unlike series-connected modules, the direct state inconsistency caused by parameter inconsistency in parallel modules is current and temperature non-uniformity, thus resulting in the inconsistency in the speed of aging among cells. Consequently, the evolution pattern of parameter inconsistency is different from that of series-connected modules. Since it’s practically impossible to monitor each cell’s current and temperature information in battery packs, considering cost and energy efficiency, it’s necessary to study how the parameter inconsistency evolves in parallel modules considering the initial parameter distribution, topology design and working condition. In this study, we assigned cells of 18650 format into several groups regarding the degree of capacity and resistance inconsistency. Then all groups are cycled under different environmental temperature and current profile.

The hydrogen supply integrated subsystem is an important part of the proton exchange membrane fuel cell system. In the multi-stack fuel cell system, the optimal design and integration of the hydrogen supply subsystem have great influence on the whole system structure. In this paper, a fuel cell hydrogen integration subsystem with two hydrogen cycle structures is established based on an optimized split-stack approach. Firstly, the matching of hydrogen subsystem is carried out on the basis of multi-stack fuel cell optimization. Then, the structure of the gas buffering and distribution device and the gas circulation device is optimized considering the gas circulation and the diversity of the equipment, and two solutions are proposed: the separate circulation structure (Structure I) and the common circulation structure (Structure II). Finally, the multi-stack fuel cell system is built by MATLAB/Simulink software and simulated under the condition of step and C-WTVC.

To solve the problem of serious roller wear and improve the smoothness of the sliding door motion process, the rigid-flexible coupling multi-body model of the vehicle sliding door was built in ADAMS. Force boundary conditions of the model were determined to meet the speed requirement of monitoring point and time requirement of door opening-closing process according to the bench test specification. The results of dynamic simulation agreed well with that of test so the practicability and credibility of the model was verified. In the optimization of the ride comfort of the sliding door, two different schemes were proposed. The one was to optimize the position of hinge pivots and the other was to optimize the structural parameters of the middle guide. The impact load of lead roller on middle guide, the curvature of the motion trajectory and angular acceleration of the sliding door centroid were taken as optimization objectives.

To promote the development of automated vehicles (AVs), large scale of field operational tests (FOTs) were carried out around the world. Applications of naturalistic driving data should base on correlative scenarios. However, most of the existing scenario typologies, aiming at advanced driving assistance system (ADAS) and extracting discontinuous fragments from driving process, are not suitable for AVs, which need to complete continuous driving tasks. In this paper, a systematic scenario-typology consisting of four layers (from top to bottom: trip, cluster, segment and process) was first proposed. A trip refers to the whole duration from starting at initial parking space to parking at final one. The basic units ‘Process’, during which the vehicle fulfils only one driving task, are classified into parking process, long-, middle- and short-time-driving-processes. A segment consists of two neighboring long-time-driving processes and a middle or/and short one between them.

As a prerequisite for energy management of hybrid vehicles, the results of speed prediction can optimize the performance of vehicles and improve fuel efficiency. Energy management strategies are usually developed based on standard driving cycles, which are too generalized to show the variability of driving conditions in different time and locations. Therefore, this paper constructs a representative driving cycle based on driving data of the corresponding time and location, used as historical information for prediction. We propose a method to construct the driving cycle based on Markov chain theory before constructing the prediction model. In this paper, multiple prediction methods are compared with traditional parametric methods. The difference in prediction accuracy between multiple prediction methods under the single time scale and multiple time scale were compared, which further verified the advantages of the speed prediction method based on Markov chain theory.

An accurate finite element (FE) model is the basis for the numerical prediction of vibration and noise of permanent magnet synchronous motors (PMSMs). This paper provides an equivalent modeling method of PMSMs considering the orthotropic material parameters of the stator system. First, a theoretical analysis of the influence of orthotropic material parameters on modal characteristics is implemented. Subsequently, the influence of orthotropic material parameters on the modal frequency of the stator is analyzed through the FE method. Then, the modal parameters of the stator core and the stator assembly are obtained by modal tests. According to the equivalent FE model and modal parameters, the orthotropic material parameters of the stator system are acquired. Moreover, to save the calculation time and simplify the modal identification process, the influence of windings is taken into account through additional mass and additional stiffness during the modeling process.

Tire cavity noise of pure electric vehicles is particularly prominent due to the absence of engine noise, which are usually eliminated by adding Helmholtz resonators with arbitrary transversal section to the wheel rims. This paper provides theoretical basis for accurately predicting and effectively improving acoustic performance of wheel resonators. A hybrid finite element method is developed to extract the transversal wavenumbers and eigenvectors, and the mode-matching scheme is employed to determine the transmission loss of the Helmholtz resonator. Based on the accuracy validation of this method, the matching design of the wheel resonators and the optimization method of tire cavity noise are studied. The identification method of the tire cavity resonance frequency is developed through the acoustic modal test. A scientific transmission loss target curve and fitness function are defined according to the noise characteristics.

The acoustic muffler is one of the practical solutions to reduce the noise in ducts. The acoustic and aerodynamic performances are two critical indices of one muffler for the air intake system of a hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicle (FCEV). In this study, the concept of phononic crystal is applied to design the muffler to obtain superior acoustic performance. One duct with periodic and compact resonator-type mufflers is designed for broadband noise attenuation. The two-dimensional (2D) transfer matrix method and bandgap theory are employed to calculate the transmission loss (TL) and acoustic bandgap. It is numerically and theoretically demonstrated that broadband noise attenuation could be acquired from 500Hz to 3500Hz. Afterwards, the three-dimensional (3D) computational fluid dynamics (CFD) approach is applied to predict the pressure distribution. The results indicate that the proposed hybrid muffler and the phononic crystal duct possess low pressure loss values.

On the study of reducing the disturbance on driver’s attention induced by low frequency vehicle interior stationary noise, a subjective evaluation is firstly carried out by means of rank rating method which introduces Distraction Level (DL) as evaluation index. A visual-finger response test is developed to help evaluating members better recognize the Distraction Level during the evaluation. A non-linear back propagation artificial neural network (BPANN) is then modeled for the prediction of subjective Distraction Level, in which linear sound pressure RMS amplitudes of five Critical Band Rates (CBRs) from 20 to 500Hz are selected as inputs of the model. These inputs comprise an input vector of BPANN. Furthermore, active noise equalization (ANE) on DL is realized based on Filtered-x Least Mean Square (FxLMS) algorithm that controls the gain coefficients of inputs of trained BPANN.

Combustion diagnostics of highly diluted mixtures are essential for the estimation of the combustion quality, and control of combustion timing in advanced combustion systems. In this paper, a novel fast response flame detection technique based on active plasma is introduced and investigated. Different from the conventional ion current sensing used in internal combustion engines, a separate electrode gap is used in the detecting probing. Further, the detecting voltage across the electrode gap is modulated actively using a multi-coil system to be slightly below the breakdown threshold before flame arrival. Once the flame front arrives at the probe, the ions on the flame front tend to decrease the breakdown voltage threshold and trigger a breakdown event. Simultaneous electrical and optical measurements are employed to investigate the flame detecting efficacy via active plasma probing under both quiescent and flow conditions.