PMKS+: Recreating a Legacy Application

The goal of this project was to recreate the Planar Mechanism Kinematic Simulator (PMKS), a legacy, open-source web application, on a modern web platform with an enhanced user experience. The conversion included support for multiple browsers and improvements to the graphical user interface. A user interface is effective when it improves the overall experience of the user. This application was developed using the latest technologies in web development, such as HTML5 and Typescript, according to the standards of the World Wide Web Consortium. Through multiple evaluations testing the interface and functions, we were able to create a similar application to PMKS that has an improved user interface experience

Walking Vacation

Our experience of a walking/cycling vacation serves as a starting point for our people scale observations of walking habits in people\u27s work, living and vacation environments. We designed and conducted a survey modeled after Citroen\u27s 2016 Our lives in our cars survey, with attention shifted from driving to walking. Survey results confirmed our observation that car awareness is higher than walking awareness

Feasibility study and prototyping of a blockchain-based transport-service pricing and allocation platform

This report summarizes the activity and findings of the JRC Proof of Concept Project Ridechain. The project investigated the applicability and market potential of blockchain technology for asset sharing in the road transport sector. The project comprised two principal activities. The first activity was market research and analysis to support the development of a new service concept and business model for blockchain-powered shared mobility. Specifically, the research resulted in the definition of a novel technology platform that leverages blockchain, cloud services, and in-car technology to enhance trust, streamline coordination and improve information exchange in P2P car sharing ecosystems. The second activity was technology prototyping to demonstrate the technical feasibility of the novel service concept using state of the art blockchain and IoT frameworks. These two activities provided answers to two respective research questions. First, what would be a high-value transport sector market to which a blockchain-powered technology product could offer a high-value solution? Second, how could this technology product be realized?JRC.C.4-Sustainable Transpor

Drone Control in AR: An Intuitive System for Single-Handed Gesture Control, Drone Tracking, and Contextualized Camera Feed Visualization in Augmented Reality

Traditional drone handheld remote controllers, although well-established and widely used, are not a particularly intuitive control method. At the same time, drone pilots normally watch the drone video feed on a smartphone or another small screen attached to the remote. This forces them to constantly shift their visual focus from the drone to the screen and vice-versa. This can be an eye-and-mind-tiring and stressful experience, as the eyes constantly change focus and the mind struggles to merge two different points of view. This paper presents a solution based on Microsoft’s HoloLens 2 headset that leverages augmented reality and gesture recognition to make drone piloting easier, more comfortable, and more intuitive. It describes a system for single-handed gesture control that can achieve all maneuvers possible with a traditional remote, including complex motions; a method for tracking a real drone in AR to improve flying beyond line of sight or at distances where the physical drone is hard to see; and the option to display the drone’s live video feed in AR, either in first-person-view mode or in context with the environment

Drone Control in AR: An Intuitive System for Single-Handed Gesture Control, Drone Tracking, and Contextualized Camera Feed Visualization in Augmented Reality

Traditional drone handheld remote controllers, although well-established and widely used, are not a particularly intuitive control method. At the same time, drone pilots normally watch the drone video feed on a smartphone or another small screen attached to the remote. This forces them to constantly shift their visual focus from the drone to the screen and vice-versa. This can be an eye-and-mind-tiring and stressful experience, as the eyes constantly change focus and the mind struggles to merge two different points of view. This paper presents a solution based on Microsoft’s HoloLens 2 headset that leverages augmented reality and gesture recognition to make drone piloting easier, more comfortable, and more intuitive. It describes a system for single-handed gesture control that can achieve all maneuvers possible with a traditional remote, including complex motions; a method for tracking a real drone in AR to improve flying beyond line of sight or at distances where the physical drone is hard to see; and the option to display the drone’s live video feed in AR, either in first-person-view mode or in context with the environment

Fuel consumption and CO2 emissions of passenger cars over the New Worldwide Harmonized Test Protocol

In 2014 the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) adopted the global technical regulation No. 15 concerning the Worldwide harmonized Light duty Test Procedure (WTLP). Having significantly contributed to its development, the European Commission is now aiming at introducing the new test procedure in the European type-approval legislation for light duty vehicles in order to replace the New European Driving Cycle (NEDC) as the certification test. The current paper aims to assess the effect of WLTP introduction on the reported CO2 emissions from passenger cars presently measured under the New European Driving Cycle and the corresponding test protocol. The most important differences between the two testing procedures, apart from the kinematic characteristics of the respective driving cycles, is the determination of the vehicle inertia and driving resistance, the gear shifting sequence, the soak and test temperature and the post-test charge balance correction applied to WLTP. In order to quantify and analyze the effect of these differences in the end value of CO2 emissions, WLTP and NEDC CO2 emission measurements were performed on 20 vehicles, covering almost the whole European market. WLTP CO2 values range from 125.5 to 217.9 g/km, NEDC values range from 105.4 to 213.2 g/km and the ΔCO2 between WLTP and NEDC ranges from 4.7 to 29.2 g/km for the given vehicle sample. The average cold start effect over WLTP was found 6.1 g/km, while for NEDC it was found 12.3 g/km. For a small gasoline and a medium sized diesel passenger car, the different inertia mass and driving resistance is responsible 63% and 81% of the observed ΔCO2 between these two driving cycles respectively, whereas the other parameters (driving profile, gear shifting, test temperature) account for the remaining 37% and 19%.JRC.C.4-Sustainable Transpor

From lab-to-road & vice-versa: Using a simulation-based approach for predicting real-world CO2 emissions

CO2 emissions of light-duty vehicles are certified over standardised, laboratory-based conditions and reported to the consumers. Such tests reflect specific operating conditions that differ from what an individual driver experiences. Vehicle simulation can bridge the gap and help provide customised, vehicle and trip-specific values. This study investigates the potential of using a simulation-based approach for calculating CO2 emissions over real-world operation, when limited information and test-data are available. The methodology introduced in the European vehicle certification regulation since 2017 is used as a basis. Seven vehicles were tested over multiple on-road trips and in some cases on a chassis dyno. First, the analysis focused on the accuracy of the simulations when only limited information for the vehicle and its components are used. Subsequently, the model was calibrated on test data. The first case presented an error between 1.0% and 4.4% depending on the test, while the standard deviation was 10.0%. When using WLTP for calibration, the average error dropped to 2.9% to 0.2%, and the standard deviation decreased to 2.0%. When calibrating over on-road tests, the average error was 0.7% for the on-road tests and 4.5% for the WLTP.JRC.C.4-Sustainable Transpor

The development and validation of a vehicle simulator for the introduction of Worldwide Harmonized test protocol in the European light duty vehicle CO2 certification process

As of July 2017, the emissions type-approval of light-duty vehicles in Europe is based on the Worldwide Harmonized Light-duty vehicles Test Procedure (WLTP), introduced to replace the old and outdated New European Driving Cycle (NEDC) test procedure. Since some elements of the European Legislation are still based on the NEDC (2020 CO2 emission targets, vehicle labelling, national vehicle taxation policies, etc.) in order to allow sufficient lead time to vehicle manufacturers and national authorities to adapt to the new procedure, a simulation-based approach was chosen to calculate CO2 emissions and fuel consumption according to the NEDC regime in the period 2017–2020. To achieve this objective without significantly increasing the cost and duration of the certification procedure, existing regulation foresees that vehicles are tested over the WLTP for CO2 emissions, the test results are used as input in a simulation model that then calculates the corresponding CO2 according to the NEDC test protocol. A dedicated vehicle simulation model (CO2MPAS) was developed for the purpose and is currently used for the type-approval of new vehicles in Europe. The development specifications of CO2MPAS were challenging, as it had to be highly accurate, exhibit fast operation, and function with a limited number of input data. This paper presents the development principles and process followed, details of the physical models employed in CO2MPAS, and provides information regarding its accuracy, validity and in use operation. CO2MPAS achieves low errors in the prediction of the NEDC cycle that in the controlled sample used for its development are of the order of 1% with a standard deviation of 3%, while the respective in-use numbers are of the order of 1.5% and 5%. In parallel, random sampling and testing of a 10% of the type-approved vehicles also occurs in order to guarantee the quality of the CO2MPAS results and the validity of the process. It is concluded that CO2MPAS can be used to accurately estimate emissions of conventional vehicles within a ±4% accuracy range, even when limited input data are available. In addition, the in-use data analyzed suggest that the use of the tool enables the certification of about 2/3 of the new vehicle models without the need of additional experimental tests. This is an important achievement as it reduces the costs and time necessary to certify light-duty vehicle CO2 emissions during the transitional period. Finally, it can be concluded that the use of CO2MPAS does not affect the declared CO2 emissions of vehicles over NEDC conditions.JRC.C.4-Sustainable Transpor

The validation of CO2MPAS tool for supporting the introduction of WLTP in the European CO2 certification

To support the transition from NEDC-based CO2 monitoring to the WLTP-based one, the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission develops the CO2 Model for Passenger and commercial vehicles (CO2MPAS), to be used for correlating the measured WLTP CO2 emissions to their NEDC equivalent ones. Scope of CO2MPAS is to calculate NEDC CO2 emissions based on limited information collected during the WLTP test at vehicle type-approval. The model also attempts to provide a flexible yet robust basis for testing the CO2 reduction potential of different technology packages and for analyzing different policy options for curbing CO2 emissions in the future. This paper demonstrates a first validation of the model. Synthetic and real data were obtained from simulations and tests, respectively, that were performed at the Laboratory of Applied Thermodynamics of the Aristotle University and the JRC’s VELA laboratories over both cycles. A pool of 22 sets of real tests and more than 2000 simulation cases were developed for running the validation exercise. Results suggest a good operation of CO2MPAS with an error of the CO2 emission prediction on NEDC below ± 4% in 90% of the cases.JRC.C.4-Sustainable Transpor