A novel method to determine a national diesel emissions inventory

Bibliography: leaves 165-177.A body of data estimating the exhaust emissions from diesel commercial vehicle engines typical of the South African vehicle population was measured in an experimental programme. The core of this work was part of the recent South African Vehicle Emissions Project (VEP), a national programme commissioned by the Department of Minerals and Energy that was completed at the end of 1998. The engine sample for the tests was made up entirely of engines manufactured by Atlantis Diesel Engines (ADE) under licence from Daimler Chrysler (formerly Mercedes Benz). The ADE assembly line closed in 1999 and so this data is becoming less relevant as these engines become less prevalent. The age of the South African vehicle population (12 years average age for heavy commercial vehicles) does, however, preclude rapid change of the model composition and so analysis using the VEP data will be useful for some time to come. This VEP data was supplemented by studies commissioned by Mossgas and BPSouthern Africa and input to a so-called "emissions inventory" model. This is simply a calculation of the total emissions produced by the vehicle park over a fixed period, usually a year, and takes no account of the dispersion of the pollutants into the atmosphere. The principle of this simple approach is that if an inventory model is sensitive to technology, fuel and population drivers, policy and growth scenarios can be simulated easily and their effects on total emissions quantified with reasonable assurance of accuracy. Given that the objective of policymaking is to decide on optimal and cost-effective actions, and not to predict to an exact degree the outcome of these actions, it may be argued that such an approach is sufficient to prioritise available emissions reduction strategies. A total of 14 scenarios were modelled and compared to a baseline of emissions from South African diesel commercial vehicles. These included the increased market penetration of technologies like turbocharging and intercooling, the reduction of diesel fuel sulphur levels, the compliance of the vehicle population to various tiers of European legislation and the conversion of the vehicle population to Compressed Natural Gas (CNG)-fuelled operation

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Mobile robots navigation includes different interrelated activities: (i) perception, as obtaining and interpreting sensory information; (ii) exploration, as the strategy that guides the robot to select the next direction to go; (iii) mapping, involving the construction of a spatial representation by using the sensory information perceived; (iv) localization, as the strategy to estimate the robot position within the spatial map; (v) path planning, as the strategy to find a path towards a goal location being optimal or not; and (vi) path execution, where motor actions are determined and adapted to environmental changes. The book addresses those activities by integrating results from the research work of several authors all over the world. Research cases are documented in 32 chapters organized within 7 categories next described

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