Sustainability, transport and design: reviewing the prospects for safely encouraging eco-driving

Private vehicle use contributes a disproportionately large amount to the degradation of the environment we inhabit. Technological advancement is of course critical to the mitigation of climate change, however alone it will not suffice; we must also see behavioural change. This paper will argue for the application of Ergonomics to the design of private vehicles, particularly low-carbon vehicles (e.g. hybrid and electric), to encourage this behavioural change. A brief review of literature is offered concerning the effect of the design of a technological object on behaviour, the inter-related nature of goals and feedback in guiding performance, the effect on fuel economy of different driving styles, and the various challenges brought by hybrid and electric vehicles, including range anxiety, workload and distraction, complexity, and novelty. This is followed by a discussion on the potential applicability of a particular design framework, namely Ecological Interface Design, to the design of in-vehicle interfaces that encourage energy-conserving driving behaviours whilst minimising distraction and workload, thus ensuring safety

Automated precision passing system

Athletes are always seeking ways to improve their performance. Down time and a lack of capable throwers prevent athletic receivers from practicing their skills. We hope to aid athletes in receiving drills within their respective sports and increase practice efficiency. In order to achieve this, the machine has one major axis of rotation driven by a motor. This enables it to adjust where the ball is being thrown. Using an Arduino Uno coupled with a Roboteq AX1500 motor driver, the Automated Precision Passing System is able to throw a ball to a specified point in space by adjusting both the azimuth and ball-throwing motor speed. Our testing shows that our prototype has the ability to position itself in three different orientations as well as adjust the launch motor speed, but we were unable to launch the ball the original distance that we desired. From this project, we gained valuable knowledge in the areas of machine design, control systems, and project management. In order to continue the project and create a functional consumer product there are several improvements that need to be made to the system. The Automated Precision Passing System needs to be more rigid, have more power, and include more throwing positions

Development and Validation of Functional Model of a Cruise Control System

Modern automobiles can be considered as a collection of many subsystems working with each other to realize safe transportation of the occupants. Innovative technologies that make transportation easier are increasingly incorporated into the automobile in the form of functionalities. These new functionalities in turn increase the complexity of the system framework present and traceability is lost or becomes very tricky in the process. This hugely impacts the development phase of an automobile, in which, the safety and reliability of the automobile design should be ensured. Hence, there is a need to ensure operational safety of the vehicles while adding new functionalities to the vehicle. To address this issue, functional models of such systems are created and analysed. The main purpose of developing a functional model is to improve the traceability and reusability of a system which reduces development time and cost. Operational safety of the system is ensured by analysing the system with respect to random and systematic failures and including safety mechanism to prevent such failures. This paper discusses the development and validation of a functional model of a conventional cruise control system in a passenger vehicle based on the ISO 26262 Road Vehicles - Functional Safety standard. A methodology for creating functional architectures and an architecture of a cruise control system developed using the methodology are presented.Comment: In Proceedings FESCA 2016, arXiv:1603.0837

Ecological interface design for eco-driving

Eco-driving issues are of high priority at the moment. Research suggests that a change in driving style can reduce fuel consumption and emissions by around 15% in many cases. In response to this need, the UK Foot-LITE project developed an in-car feedback system to encourage safer and greener driving behaviours. In order to balance positive behaviour change against the potential negative effects of distraction, an Ecological Interface Design approach was adopted. The current paper presents an overview of the humancentred design process adopted in the Foot-LITE project, as well as a review of other similar systems on the market

A 16 channel high-voltage driver with 14 bit resolution for driving piezoelectric actuators

A high-voltage, 16 channel driver with a maximum voltage of 72 volt and 14 bit resolution in a high-voltage CMOS (HV-CMOS) process is presented. This design incorporates a 14 bit monotonic by design DAC together with a high-voltage complementary class AB output stage for each channel. All 16 channels are used for driving a piezoelectric actuator within the control loop of a micropositioning system. Since the output voltages are static most of the time, a class AB amplifier is used, implementing voltage feedback to achieve 14 bit accuracy. The output driver consists of a push-pull stage with a built-in output current limitation and high-impedance mode. Also a protection circuit is added which limits the internal current when the output voltage saturates against the high-voltage rail. The 14 bit resolution of each channel is generated with a segmented resistor string DAC which assures monotonic by design behavior by using leapfrogging of the buffers used between segments. A diagonal shuffle layout is used for the resistor strings leading to cancellation of first order process gradients. The dense integration of 16 channels with high peak currents results in crosstalk, countered in this design by using staggered switching and resampling of the output voltages

Business Case and Technology Analysis for 5G Low Latency Applications

A large number of new consumer and industrial applications are likely to change the classic operator's business models and provide a wide range of new markets to enter. This article analyses the most relevant 5G use cases that require ultra-low latency, from both technical and business perspectives. Low latency services pose challenging requirements to the network, and to fulfill them operators need to invest in costly changes in their network. In this sense, it is not clear whether such investments are going to be amortized with these new business models. In light of this, specific applications and requirements are described and the potential market benefits for operators are analysed. Conclusions show that operators have clear opportunities to add value and position themselves strongly with the increasing number of services to be provided by 5G.Comment: 18 pages, 5 figure