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Autonomous driving is looked upon as solution for future of automotive vehicles. The technology has tremendous possibilities to improve safety, fuel economy, comfort, cost of ownership etc. The project to develop an autonomous controller from scratch was undertaken, with objective to drive under selected test scenarios. The car, modified to drive using this autonomous controller, is able to handle these scenarios. The key scenarios include ability to successfully drive on tracks with well-marked lanes, Follow the route as per selected trip plan file, recognize and follow all traffic road signs, traffic signals en-route, identify other vehicles on the road or pedestrians in the lane and take the appropriate action. The development was carried out using frugal engineering approach. As the Autonomous Vehicle technology is still under development, the standard proven published approaches are not available.

Vehicle localization and position determination is a major factor for the operation of Autonomous Vehicle. Errors or unavailability of resources to determine this, poses a serious threat not only to the vehicle but also the environment around it. Global Positioning System (GPS) is one of the most common resources to determine position about the reference geographic coordinate system. But this resource has several drawbacks of its own viz. clock errors, multi-path errors and also uncertainty of good signal strength due to weather conditions or physical barriers. Also an additional drawback of a low-update rate makes it unreliable for the Autonomous Localization algorithm to operate on this. Thus a system is required which has no external environment dependencies to determine the position of the vehicle. Inertial Measurement Unit is a coupled system comprising of a 3-axis accelerometer and 3-axis gyroscope which records body force accelerations and the yaw rate.

Active control mainly comprises of three parts; sensor-detects the input disturbance, actuator -provide counter measures and control logic -processing of input disturbances and converting it into logical output. Lot of methods for active vibration control are available but this paper deals with active control of steering wheel vibrations of an LCV. A steering wheel is, one such component that directly transfers vibration to the driver. Active technique described here is implemented using accelerometer sensor, IMA (Inertial Mass Actuator) and feed forward Fx-LMS (Filtered reference Least Mean Square) control algorithm. IMA is a single-degree-of-freedom oscillator. To enable a control, IMA needs to be coupled to the structure at a single point, acting as an add-on to the passive system. Fx-LMS is a type of adaptive algorithm which is computationally simple and it also includes compensation for secondary path effects by using an estimate of the secondary path.

A vehicle's suspension system is the basic component which decides its dynamic performance. It is designed to separate the vehicle body and its passengers or payload from vibrations arising due to road disturbances, at the same time to ensure that the tires stay in adequate contact with the road surface. Challenges in suspension design many a time's leads in a compromise between the conflicting demands of ride comfort and road holding. Vehicles having soft suspension isolate the vehicle body from the higher frequencies in suspension but reduce the ability of the dampers to control the wheel movements which leads to poor road holding. Conversely, hard suspension provides more road holding but transmits more of the suspension movement to the body; in turn provide a less comfortable ride. The development of active/ semi active suspension has addressed both these needs and provides optimum level of ride comfort and road holding which results in the safety and driving pleasure.

Used oil analysis plays an important role in the field of engine development, considering that it can give brief idea about performance of lubricant/ oil being used, its compatibility with the system under considerations. At present, regular testing is done like elemental analysis using Inductive Coupled Plasma (ICP) which can give idea about wear elements and additive elements. But it does not give information on morphological characterization of particles. In present work, Environmental Scanning Electron Microscopy technique with EDAX detector is used for characterizing the used oil. Oil is filtered on suitable paper and the particles collected on paper are analyzed. This gives the information on morphology and size of particles, their elemental analysis and mapping so that the sources can be judged. Size of wear metal particle is very important factor as even few bigger size particles are more detrimental than large number of smaller particles.

Impact of higher gasoline-ethanol blends E10 and E20, on the fuel system components of gasoline vehicles must be known to ascertain the intended performance of these components throughout its service life. Study of compatibility of particular selected grades of metals, like Aluminium alloy, Brass & Stainless steel, with ethanol-gasoline blends (E10 and E20) in comparison with Commercial gasoline was conducted as per the guidelines given in SAE J1747. Three specimen of each metal were exposed (Fully immersed, half immersed & Vapour) to above fuels at 45 °C for 2016 hours. Mass loss/ gain data was recorded periodically at the end of 1st, 3rd, 6th, and 12th week and based on this data corrosion rate was calculated. Substantial tarnishing was observed in case of brass & slight colour change in case of aluminium & steel alloys. All the three distinct metals grades tested were found compatible with E10 & E20 with no significant corrosion rate at the end of the test period.