Design of a Novel Intelligent Controller for Efficient Power Delivery in Hybrid Vehicles

This paper presents the development of a novel intelligent controller that improves fuel efficiency in parallel hybrid vehicles. The complexity of parallel hybrid vehicle models makes development of classical controllers which optimize energy usage extremely difficult. Therefore, we introduce a fuzzy controller that uses four inputs: battery state-of-charge, fuel tank fill quotient, vehicle distance-to-goal and driver power demand. The outputs of the controller are on/off states of the battery power supply, generator, and engine. The controller uses these outputs in a hierarchical power distribution scheme that prioritizes the delivery of power by the most efficient drive mechanism. Simulation results show that the controller increases battery usage up to 20% while decreasing fuel consumption. To verify the robustness of the proposed system, white noise is injected to the controller. The results prove that the system is robust to perturbations.