Energy saving route guidance using altitude information

Navigation systems can be viewed as an energy-saving and environment-friendly device that prevents unnecessary consumption of fuel. Because navigation systems are possible to decide a route that results in the minimum fuel consumption. This paper discusses how to find routes so that the minimum fuel consumption can be expected. The fuel consumption is generally in proportion to the travel time, and, it is affected by traffic congestion of the route. However, the fuel consumption is also affected by upgrades and downgrades. There are cases where the shortest route does not necessarily correspond to the most energy-saving efficient route if the recommended route contains lots of upgrades and downgrades. Particularly for navigation systems without any communication means to provide guidance of energy-saving routes, the information about upgrades and downgrades can be effective, because the traffic congestion information cannot be obtained in a real-time. This paper shows that there is a relationship between the road gradient and the fuel consumption by measuring the fuel consumption of actual operation on a route with upgrades and downgrades. Furthermore, it will show that the energy-saving route guidance using altitude information is effective for the energy-saving operation and that the altitude data can be reflected on the Kiwi map data format in order for the energy-saving guidance to be actually provided. Also, the dynamic route search based on Bayesian statistics will be discussed.