Graduates School of Integrated Frontier Sciences,Kyushu UniversityThe Department of Automotive Science

In the Information and Control Field, professor and students are to study fundamental technologies and development methodologies for realizing automotive control and information technology. Automotive components used to be controlled separately and are now controlled systematically. Hereafter, cars and infrastructures will be communicated with each other and will be controlled for higher safety, comfort and environmental performance. Energy and power sources for automobiles will become diversified and new control methods will be required for them. The Information and Control Field brings up human resources who have knowledge on and are capable of developing automotive control IT systems.

An information-driven simulation system among humans, cars, and traffic flows

Automotive sensors and application systems

We are researching devices and application systems that will improve safety and convenience.
(1) Sensing systems of preventing collision accidents
(2) Intersection accident analysis and optimal route search (Fukuoka City)
(3) Far infrared imaging sensors and their automotive applications
(4) Optical wireless power transmission (charging)

High efficiency and high power density motors for mobility applications

We are studying high efficiency and high power density motors and magnetic gears for mobility applications.
(1) High efficiency and high power density PM synchronous motors
(2) High efficiency and high power density superconducting synchronous (induction) motors
(3) High efficiency and high power density magnetic gears
(4) Electromagnetic field analysis

Automotive Application by Superconducting Technology

Superconducting technology has an advantage where we can transport an electric current at more than 100 times higher current density than the case with conventional one without losses, and has been expected in the automotive field for (i) application to motors for electric vehicles, (ii) application to wireless charging system, and (iii) synergy effects with hydrogen infrastructure which is crucial for the popularization of fuel-cell cars. Basic and applied superconducting technology for them is widely developed in this laboratory.

Real Data Mining and Recommendation

We are developing methods for recommending attractive places, events, and itineraries based on reviews on SNS, people movement, open data for data enrichment as well as for predicting and estimating road conditions, traffic flow, travel and delay times, and hazardous situations such as traffic accidents using vehicle probe data (time, latitude, longitude, x-y-z acceleration, speed, etc.). In addition, we also develop methods for transforming various data into an optimal upstream representation to easily achieve the desired downstream tasks.