Defining Signatures for Intelligent Vehicles with Different Types of Powertrains

This article presents a straightforward and effective way of adding the Internet of Vehicles function to vehicles with different drive systems. By equipping the vehicle with a transmission device that communicates with the vehicle’s on-board diagnostics system, the current parameters of the vehicle’s operation can be read. This allows for wireless transmission to the application installed on the mobile device. The current parameters related to the vehicle’s operation together with the location data from the Global Positioning System on the mobile device are transferred to the cloud server. In this way, each vehicle with a drive system acquires the Internet of Vehicles function. Using this setup, short trips in urban conditions were carried out in a vehicle with an internal combustion engine and a plug-in hybrid vehicle. The data from the cloud system were then processed using the KNIME analytical platform. Signatures characterizing the vehicles with two types of drive systems were created. The obtained results were analyzed using various analytical tools and experimentally validated. The presented method is universally applicable and allows for the quick recognition of different drive systems based on signatures implementing k-means analysis. Acquiring and processing data from vehicles with various drive systems can be used to obtain important information about the vehicle itself, the road infrastructure, and the vehicle’s immediate surroundings, which can translate into increased road safety.