Design optimisation and real-time energy management control of the electrified off-highway vehicle with artificial intelligence

Targeting zeros-emissions in transportation, future vehicles will be more energy-efficient via powertrain electrification. This PhD research aims to optimise an electrified off-highway vehicle to achieve the maximum energy efficiency by exploring new artificial intelligence algorithms. The modelling study of the vehicle system is firstly performed. Offline design optimisation and online optimum energy management control methodologies have been researched. New optimisation methods are proposed and compared with the benchmark methods. Hardware-in-the-Loop testing of the energy management controller has been carried out for validation of the control methods. This research delivers three original contributions: 1) Chaos-enhance accelerated particle swarm optimisation algorithm for offline design optimisation is proposed for the first time. This can achieve 200% higher reputation-index value compared to the particle swarm optimisation method. 2) Online swarm intelligent programming is developed as a new online optimisation method for model-based predictive control of the vehicle energy-flow. This method can save up to 17% energy over the rule-based strategy. 3) Multi-step reinforcement learning is researched for a new concept of ‘model-free’ predictive energy management with the capability of continuously online optimisation in real-world driving. It can further save at least 9% energy

Pedestrian-Aware Supervisory Control System Interactive Optimization of Connected Hybrid Electric Vehicles via Fuzzy Adaptive Cost Map and Bees Algorithm

Electrified vehicles are increasingly being seen as a means of mitigating the pressing concerns of traffic-related pollution. Due to the nature of engine-assisted vehicle exhaust systems, pedestrians in close proximity to these vehicles may experience events where specific emission concentrations are high enough to cause health effects. To minimize pedestrians’ exposure to vehicle emissions and pollutants nearby, we present a pedestrian-aware supervisory control system for connected hybrid electric vehicles by proposing an interactive optimization methodology. This optimization methodology combines a novel fuzzy adaptive cost map and the Bees Algorithm to optimize power-split control parameters. It enables the self-regulation of inter-objective weights of fuel and exhaust emissions based on the real-time pedestrian density information during the optimization process. The evaluation of the vehicle performance by using the proposed methodology is conducted on the realistic trip map involving pedestrian density information collected from the University College Dublin campus. Moreover, two bootstrap sampling techniques and effect of communication quality are both investigated in order to examine the robustness of the improved vehicle system. The results demonstrate that 14.42% mass of exhaust emissions can be reduced for the involved pedestrians, by using the developed fuzzy adaptive cost map