ecoDriver

Supporting the driver in conserving energy and reducing emissions

Motivation

Within the scope of the joint research project “ecoDriver”, funded by the European Commission, the Institut für Kraftfahrzeuge (ika) of the RWTH Aachen University investigates an improved design of the Human-Machine-Interface (HMI) to encourage green driving, aiming to reduce fuel consumption in a long-term observation.

Currently, available systems usually utilise pre-implemented information, describing the engine model and average fuel consumption with regard to revolutions per minute and vehicle velocity to estimate and display the current fuel consumption. However, it is evident that the visualisation of these parameters only has a small influence on the driving behaviour. While influenced by many factors, including tyre pressure, load, engine performance and environmental conditions, a vehicle’s fuel and energy demand mainly depends on driving behaviour. The task of the ecoDriver project team is the development of suitable HMI concepts, able to consider all factors mentioned above and to react accordingly. These new concepts should at any time provide simple instructions in order to reduce the energy consumption, particular focusing on a positive long term influence of the driver.

Within this project, ika will conduct driving simulator tests to evaluate the influence of different HMI systems on driving behaviour and performance as well as on fuel consumption. Afterwards, a selected concept will be implemented on ika’s test vehicle in order to carry out volunteer tests to evaluate the acceptance and the effectiveness of this concept.

Further project partners are the BMW AG and the Daimler AG (Germany), the University of Leeds (Great Britain), ERTICO – ITS Europe (Belgium), TNO and NAVTEQ (Netherlands), VTI (Sweden), CTAG (Spain), IFSTTAR (France) and the Fiat Research Centre (Italy).