If any innovative electric brake is developed which is able to control speed to zero (hereinafter referred to as the zero-speed electric brake), it will bring us numerous merits; By the use of the zero speed electric brake, development of an automatic train control for more effective deceleration and of a lighter mechanical brake system, will be enabled, including greater easiness of maintenance. To realize stable control of the zero speed electric brake in the low speed range where any speed sensor cannot detect speed accurately, it is necessary to develop a new control algorithm. Therefore, we are now developing new halting algorithms for the zero-speed electric brake ; These algorithms are called "Torque Pattern Control" and "Gradient Estimating Feed Forward Torque Pattern Control", and as part of the development, we have already tested them on the specimen vehicles which run on the rolling stock test stand.
For this project, we implemented running tests in Takatori Rolling Stock Works in JR-WEST. The results thereof show that the pneumatic brake system may work creating brake force to some extent, thus enabling to halt the vehicle at all ranges of velocity in the initially charged pressure of the pneumatic brake. By using the initially charged pressure effectively, it is found that the vehicle may halt even with an approximate estimation of the gradient or without estimation. From this, we are convinced that a zero speed electric brake can be put into practical use easily in the future.