Barron Associates awarded Dept of Energy Phase I SBIR titled “Machine Learning for Individualized Vehicle Eco-Routing”

Vehicle “eco-routing” means that instead of driving the fastest or shortest route between two locations, a driver would choose the most energy-efficient route.  Eco-routing operates at the macroscopic level to identify the most energy efficient route to a destination based on the specific vehicle and powertrain.  The most impressive eco-routing energy savings are based on a highly accurate vehicle and powertrain model.  In order to generalize eco-routing technology for widespread use to include different vehicles and powertrains, it becomes extremely important to validate prediction models.  Development of highly-accurate a priori powertrain models for every possible vehicle over every possible drive cycle is financially and logistically impossible.  Therefore, the research team will utilize Machine Learning (ML) techniques to synthesize individualized models of energy consumption using on-vehicle data collected during real-world driving experience.