A driving cycle is a relation profile of speed versus time of a vehicle on a specified route. Driving cycles are often used by environmentalist and traffic engineers to estimate and conduct studies on vehicle emission and fuel consumption. However, the biggest challenge in developing an accurate driving cycle is to manage the huge amount of data required for the development and feature extraction. Past research on a driving cycle tracking device (DC-TRAD) had proven an increase of the accuracy of data capturing by 80%; in that work, the device is able to capture cruises where the speed of the vehicle is nonzero when the acceleration is zero [1]. Such a device was also developed with Internet-of-Things (IoT) implementation, which is in line with Industrial Revolution 4.0 (IR 4.0). In this case, DC-TRAD captures and records the data collected in the MySQL database, which was constructed using Personal Home Page codes [2].
Malaysia is at its initial stage of developing a driving cycle, which matches the real-world road conditions of Malaysia [3]. To construct an accurate driving cycle, three major modes of driving must be taken into count; these are low, idle, and medium speed. There are a few measured driving cycles that are used worldwide namely, the worldwide harmonized light vehicle test cycle (WLTC), the new European drive cycle (NEDC), and the federal test procedure (FTP). However, the criticality of development and manufacturing is solely depending on the quality of data and information obtained. In automotive industries, it has always been a challenge to manage the production cost, which is shooting high and contributed by other factors such as parts failures, inaccurate data, low efficiencies, and system corruption [4].
This research is an initiative to implement the usage of DC-TRAD in driving cycle development strategies. The focus is on improving the accuracy of the development [5]. This research also focuses on conceptually designing a DC-TRAD in MATLAB/Simulink, which is widely utilized by industries, mainly the automotive sectors [6-8]. This software is widely used in industry due to its flexibility and automotive supporting blocks and toolboxes, which are easily integrated to form a complex simulation system. The model of DC-TRAD was developed in this environment to simulate and output features extracted by a click through which it calculates 10 main parameters that are important for a driving cycle development and analysis. The prototype and conceptual model of DC-TRAD was successfully implemented on Kuala Terengganu driving cycle, and this research is focusing on the Kinta district driving cycle to strengthen the validity of DC-TRAD and, at the same time, analyze the features on Kinta district.