Development of an innovative non rule-based energy management strategy for a Hybrid Electric Vehicle, structured for predictive driving controls based on external information knowledge

Recently, the interest of the automotive market for hybrid vehicles has increased due to the more restrictive pollutants emissions legislation and to the necessity of decreasing the fossil fuel consumption, since such solution allows a consistent improvement of the vehicle global efficiency. The term hybridization regards the energy flow in the powertrain of a vehicle: a standard vehicle has, usually, only one energy source and one energy tank; instead, a hybrid vehicle has at least two energy sources. In most cases, the prime mover is an internal combustion engine (ICE) while the auxiliary energy source can be mechanical, electrical, pneumatic or hydraulic. It is expected from the control unit of a hybrid vehicle the use of the ICE in high efficiency working zones and to shut it down when it is more convenient, while using the EMG at partial loads and as a fast torque response during transients. However, the battery state of charge may represent a limitation for such a strategy. That’s the reason why, in most cases, energy management strategies are based on the State Of Charge, or SOC, control. Several studies have been conducted on this topic and many different approaches have been illustrated. The purpose of this dissertation is to develop an online (usable on-board) control strategy in which the operating modes are defined using an instantaneous optimization method that minimizes the equivalent fuel consumption of a hybrid electric vehicle. The equivalent fuel consumption is calculated by taking into account the total energy used by the hybrid powertrain during the propulsion phases. The first section presents the hybrid vehicles characteristics. The second chapter describes the global model, with a particular focus on the energy management strategies usable for the supervisory control of such a powertrain. The third chapter shows the performance of the implemented controller on a NEDC cycle compared with the one obtained with the original control strategy.

Fighting child marriage in developing countries: design and development of a mobile application

Child marriage is still a great issue in developing countries and even if the interventions to prevent it are having results, they are not enough to eliminate the problem. Among the strategies that seem to work most to fight child marriage, there is the empowerment of girls with information combined with education of parents and community. As smartphones are more accessible year after year in developing countries, this thesis wants to investigate if a mobile app could be effective in fighting child marriage and which characteristics such an app should have. The research was organized in four phases and used design and creation and case study methodologies. Firstly, the literature was analyzed and an initial design was proposed. Secondly, expert interviews were performed to gain feedback on the proposed design, and afterwards prototype was built. Thirdly, a case study in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) was performed to test the prototype, gaining insights and improvements through group interviews with 26 girls aged 15-19. Finally, a first version of the app was developed and a second phase of the case study was run in the DRC to understand if the girls were able to use the app. This phase included 14 girls of which 6 had participated in the prototype testing and used questionnaires as a data generation method. The app was built following the Principles for Digital Development. Even if this app is built based on the case study in DRC is modular and easily adaptable to other contexts as it is not content-specific. It was shown that is worth continuing to study this topic and it was defined a conceptual framework for designing learning apps for developing countries, in particular, to fight child, early, and forced marriage.

Development of a Robotic Wires Storage System for Switchgear Manufacturing Automation

Considering the great development of robotics in industrial automation, the Remodel project aims to reproduce, through the use of Cobots, the wiring activity typical of a human operator and to realize an autonomous storage work. My researches focused on this second topic. In this paper, we will see how to realize a gripper compatible with an Omron TM5X-900, able to perform a pick and place of different types of cables, but also how to compute possible trajectories. In particular, what I needed, was a trajectory going from the Komax, the cables production machine, to a Warehouse taking into account the possible entangles of cables with the robot during its motion. The last part has been dedicated to the synchronization between robot and main machine work.