A Machine to Machine Framework for the Charging of Electric Autonomous Vehicles

Abstract

Electric Autonomous Vehicles (EAVs) have gained increasing attention of industry, governments and scientific communities concerned about issues related to classic transportation including accidents and casualties, gas emissions and air pollution, intensive traffic and city viability. One of the aspects, however, that prevent a broader adoption of this technology is the need for human interference to charge EAVs, which is still mostly manual and time-consuming. This study approaches such a problem by introducing the Inno-EAV, an open-source charging framework for EAVs that employs machine-to-machine (M2M) distributed communication. The idea behind M2M is to have networked devices that can interact, exchange information and perform actions without any manual assistance of humans. The advantages of the Inno-EAV include the automation of charging processes and the collection of relevant data that can support better decision making in the spheres of energy distribution. In this paper, we present the software design of the framework, the development process, the emphasis on the distributed architecture and the networked communication, and we discuss the back-end database that is used to store information about car owners, cars, and charging stations.