This paper presents a new control method designed to improve vehicle drivability on downhill grades. Vehicles normally gain speed when travelling downhill even if the driver desires not to accelerate. Under such situation drivers often shift into a lower gear in order to reduce the vehicle speed. With the control method described here, the gear shifting operation is executed automatically by using a driver's mental model to infer the intention to decelerate. The driver's mental model is identified by applying the Interactive Dichotomizer 3 to obtain the inductive relationship between the vehicle operating data and the driver's intention. A study was made of the timing difference between the automated gear shifting and the manual gear shifting by the driver. The results of this study verify the effectiveness of the inference mechanism on the driver's intentions to control the power-train of the vehicle.
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