Compute Optimal Travel Duration in Eco-Driving applications

Abstract Considering a trip completed by a driver, in which the effects of infrastructure (roundabouts, intersections, traffic conditions) divide the trip in segments. An important problem in eco-driving is the energy minimization by optimizing one’s driving style inside each segment while maintaining the trip’s time duration. To this aim, this paper inherits principles of optimal off-line control problems with space and time boundary conditions. The novelty concerns the introduction of a multi-objective approach applied to the optimal control. The proposed optimization problem aims to find the best combination of segment’s time durations without influencing the global final time and minimizing the trip’s corresponding energy consumption. In order to solve this problem, a graph based approach is proposed and the optimal solution is obtained through the application of the Dijkstra’s shortest path algorithm.