A New Take on Protecting Cyclists in Smart Cities

Pollution in urban centers is becoming a major societal problem. While pollution is a concern for all urban dwellers, cyclists are one of the most exposed groups due to their proximity to vehicle tailpipes. Consequently, new solutions are required to help protect citizens, especially cyclists, from the harmful effects of exhaust-gas emissions. In this context, hybrid vehicles (HVs) offer new actuation possibilities that can be exploited in this direction. More specifically, such vehicles, when working together as a group, have the ability to dynamically lower the emissions in a given area, thus benefiting citizens, whilst still giving the vehicle owner the flexibility of using an internal combustion engine. This paper aims to develop an algorithm that can be deployed in such vehicles, whereby geofences (virtual geographic boundaries) are used to specify areas of low pollution around cyclists. The emissions level inside the geofence is controlled via a coin-tossing algorithm to switch the HV motor into, and out of, electric mode, in a manner that is in some sense optimal. The optimality criterion is based on how polluting vehicles inside the geofence are, and the expected density of cyclists near each vehicle. The algorithm is triggered once a vehicle detects a cyclist. Implementations are presented both in simulation and in a real vehicle, and the system is tested using a hardware-in-the-loop platform (video provided).