16. General Purpose Real-time Algorithm for Generating Driving Curves for Driver Advisory System

At the Railway Technical Research Institute, we have developed a driver advisory system that generates driving curves with excellent punctuality and energy efficiency in real time and suggests driving methods up to a passage station. However, its applicability has been limited.

Therefore, we developed a real-time driving curve generation algorithm for the driver advisory system that can handle various diverse conditions such as train running times and railway routes. This algorithm is based on a sawtooth driving pattern that targets the scheduled average speed to the next station as the goal speed (Figure 1), and it corrects the target speed for speed limits and gradients. As a result, the algorithm generates driving curves that achieve on-time operation even in sections with speed limits, while prioritizing powering on uphill gradients to create easily operable driving patterns (Figure 2).

The driver advisory system incorporating this algorithm can promptly provide driving methods that achieve on-time operation. Although dependent on the train’s traffic conditions, we confirmed that compared to the previous algorithm that searches for end-of-acceleration speed at each passage station, the proposed algorithm achieves a higher rate of on-time operation suggestions while reducing search time (Figure 3). Additionally, over 800 validation tests while in revenue operation were conducted on 30 trains across five railway routes to verify energy-saving effects, and it was confirmed that train drivers generally hold favorable opinions about the system (Figure 4).

Based on these results, we confirmed that this system can be expected to achieve on-time operation, energy savings, and reduced driver workload for pass-through train operations.