Predictive eco-driving application considering real-world traffic flow

Eco-approach and departure (EAD) systems in connected vehicles are capable of providing the speed recommendations to drivers so that vehicles can pass through successive intersections at the appropriate instants to save time and energy. However, most of existing control strategies and global optimization algorithms for EAD systems have extremely high requirements for computational resources, which make EAD systems not easy to popularize and apply to real vehicles. To overcome this problem, this paper designs a traffic flow prediction model based on deep learning regression machine, and establishes a dynamic effective red-light duration model based on traffic flow queuing effect. To facilitate real-time update of the optimal speed, a constrained optimization model is proposed as an approximation approach, which can obtain similar optimal results to that of the pseudo-spectral method while greatly reducing calculating time. The effectiveness of the proposed control algorithm for EAD system on passing intersections and energy saving has been validated on the real vehicle under real-world traffic environment. Compared with the uninformed driver, the proposed EAD system saves 2% time and 4.6% energy on average in case that driver is informed and 8% time and 12.1% energy in case of autonomous driving.