Adaptive control strategy and method for optimizing hybrid electric vehicles

A hybrid electric vehicle including an electric motor, a battery and an internal combustion engine, the vehicle comprising:

• a power control module having an adaptive control unit for interfacing with sensors and actuators of the electric motor, the battery and the internal combustion engine;
• the adaptive control unit including an artificial neural network that is adapted to changing driving conditions or patterns, wherein the artificial neural network includes an input layer having about 20 neurons, a hidden layer having about 20 neurons and an output layer having about 1 neuron;
• and
• a combined control strategy for an entire operating range of the hybrid electric vehicle including a plurality of control strategies for a plurality of driving profiles with optimized operation points of each of the plurality of driving profiles, wherein the artificial neural network combines the optimized operation points of each of the plurality of driving profiles into the combined control strategy.

A method of operating a hybrid electric vehicle comprising:

• providing a hybrid electric vehicle having an adaptive control unit, wherein the adaptive control unit includes an artificial neural network;
• receiving input signals from sensors of the hybrid electric vehicle;
• calculating output signals in the adaptive control unit based on maximizing fuel economy, minimizing emissions, meeting peak power demands and providing acceptable transient response during changing driving conditions;
• sending output signals to an internal combustion engine or an electric motor of the hybrid electric vehicle;
• and
• training the artificial neural network with a plurality of control strategies for various driving conditions or profiles for a sufficient number of iterations and combining optimized operation points of each of the various driving conditions or profiles into a combined control strategy, wherein training includes a Levenberg-Marquardt training algorithm and a gradient decent learning algorithm with momentum weight/bias.