Creating innovation with systems integration—Road and vehicle integrated electric transportation system

Abstract

This paper introduces the system design and integration issue of the revolutionary transportation system called On-Line Electric Vehicle (OLEV) recently developed by Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). The OLEV is an electric transportation system that utilizes an innovative wireless charging solution. The OLEV system consists of vehicle units and charging units, which are the road-embedded power transmitters. The battery in the vehicle is charged remotely from the transmitters buried under the road and the charge can be done even while the vehicle is moving. The prototype of the OLEV has been successfully developed and the process of developing a commercial version is in progress. The OLEV has been considered as one of the leading green mass transportation solutions in Seoul. The OLEV solved one of the most critical barriers in the commercialization of the electric vehicle—heavy and bulky battery sizes and long charging down times—by integrating the charging system and vehicles units into one single system. This paper describes the system design and system architecture issues and presents the optimization method for design parameter selection in the integrated system. Particularly, we present the mathematical model for allocating the power transmitters and determining the battery size using mathematical optimization techniques. The goal of this paper is to present how the innovation has been created by integrating two separate systems—vehicles and charging units, as well as how the integrated system could be further enhanced with systems optimization methods.