Environmentally Friendly Navigation Techniques

Background:

Current navigation systems offer “shortest-distance” or “shortest-time” functions to help avoid traffic congestion but neither of them determine the most fuel efficient route. With rising gas prices and vehicle emissions, a more advanced navigation system with additional functions, such as an environmentally-friendly feature, is needed. This accomplishment can make a huge improvement on increasing fuel costs and air pollution. The in-vehicle navigation system is also expected to competitively penetrate the US market in the next couple years with annual sales quadrupling to $13M.

Brief Description:

UCR researchers have developed an innovative vehicle navigation system (VNS) that will allow users to choose a route that is the most gas efficient and emanates less emissions. The energy- and emissions-minimization function is incorporated on top of distance- and time-minimizing functions that currently exists in the traditional VNS. This new intelligent transportation system utilizes a state-of-the-art modal emissions model (CMEM) that encompasses real-world vehicle activity patterns, and can calculate the fuel consumption and emission values of each vehicle trajectory.