Context-Aware Acceleration Mapping

Concept

Context-Aware Acceleration Mapping shifts the acceleration profile in real time using speed, pedal input intensity, and scenario context (urban vs. highway, solo vs. passengers on board). Light tip-ins at low speed (e.g., 30 km/h) receive a linear, minimal-jerk profile; stronger tip-ins at higher speed (e.g., 60 km/h) receive steeper initial gradients for responsiveness. Crucially, the mapping is implemented as an optimal-control speed-pattern generator with hard jerk ceilings — not a static lookup table — so every profile stays within physiological limits for postural stability and motion sickness, regardless of driver preference.

Evidence-Based Refinement

Previously established findings (input shaping and disturbance-observer improvements to tip-in/tip-out metrics; jerk-driven postural instability) are now reinforced and extended by new evidence on four fronts:

• Optimal-control speed patterns are the right mechanism. Two new papers [3][6] generate longitudinal speed patterns via general optimal control theory, explicitly evaluating acceleration and its time derivative (jerk) to improve passenger ride quality, outperforming conventional methods in numerical experiments. This corroborates implementing the mapping as an MPC-style trajectory/shaping filter rather than gain-scheduled tables. Caveat: both validations are numerical only — no human-subject testing yet — so occupant validation is required before production.
• Stepped profiles measurably reduce motion sickness. A test-track study [2] with 31 motion-sickness-susceptible participants in a fully automated vehicle found that a two-step driving profile reduced motion sickness development on the MSAQ, and that both countermeasures improved perceived safety, trust, and reliability of the automation. This directly supports staged profile design and partially answers the acceptance question: comfort-oriented shaping was perceived as a safety feature, not a loss of control. Honest caveat: the MSTT scale showed no significant difference between conditions, so the benefit is measurement-dependent, and participants were reading passengers in an AV — actively driving occupants may respond differently.
• Perceived sportiness can be decoupled from raw performance. Simulator research on modified throttle mapping [4] establishes that mapping adjustments can create perceived sportiness without altering the vehicle's performance envelope, and provides a human-subject protocol (previously unavailable) for evaluating how drivers perceive and respond to parameter changes. Implication: the 'Sport' profile can satisfy driver preference through steep initial gradient and onset shaping while capping absolute jerk — preference and physiology need not trade off directly.
• Anti-jerk control design methods exist. Linearization of an experimentally validated hybrid drivetrain model [5] derives anti-jerk control fundamentals from acceleration and jerk profile analysis. Caveat: the results are specific to a through-the-road parallel hybrid where front/rear axle interaction dominates; the linearization methodology transfers to EV anti-jerk design, but the axle-interaction findings do not apply to single-motor EVs.

Validation Path

Comfort bounds should be validated in real vehicles, not only simulators: a vehicle-based experimental platform [1] parameterizes naturalistic routes by lateral and longitudinal acceleration intensity to quantify motion sickness on closed tracks — the appropriate instrument for confirming the system's ISO 2631-aligned ceilings across occupant types and susceptibility levels.

Implementation Bounds

The system remains a bi-criterion optimization: maximize perceived responsiveness (via mapping shape) while minimizing the probability of nausea and loss of balance, bounded by ISO 2631 comfort indexes and physiological equilibrium thresholds. Hard jerk ceilings override driver preference; when passengers are detected, the system defaults to stricter ceilings.

Remaining open questions:

• Driver-side perception of the Comfort→Sport transition step (passenger evidence [2] is encouraging but is not driver evidence).
• Real-time embeddability of the optimal-control pattern generator within powertrain control unit latency budgets (numerical demonstrations [3][6] do not establish real-time feasibility).
• Thermal/duty-cycle impact of dynamic jerk modulation on the motor and inverter — unresearched.
• Regulatory treatment (e.g., UN ECE) of software ceilings on driver-requested acceleration gradients.