Digital Applications Using Real-Time Vehicle Exhaust Information

Abstract

Vehicle emission is a major source of air pollution that causes a significant number of deaths globally. It has a profound impact on energy and the environment as well. The existing vehicle emission monitoring system is unable to help mitigating the pollution properly and therefore, requires precise real-time pollution measurement. The purpose of this paper is to discuss novel applications using the real-time measurement of pollutants from a vehicle tailpipe where exhaust gases enter the environment. Today, it is possible to measure such emission due to the emergence of affordable digital technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), wireless connectivity, cloud platform, and artificial intelligence. This paper discusses how digital technologies can be used for real-time monitoring of NOx gas as a measure of vehicle emission and predictive analytics applications. A description of data collection and pre-processing methodologies, actual collected data, and an approach to identify patterns between inputs such as vehicle speed and altitude and output such as NOx emission are included. Applying a simple neural network has produced promising results and is a first step towards developing predictive applications.