Steering Feel Generation in Driving Simulators and Steer-by-Wire Vehicles

Motivation and Objectives

In contrast to conventional steering systems, there is no mechanical connection between the steering wheel and the wheels in steer-by-wire vehicles. The wheel angle and the hand wheel torque are instead realized through separated actuators: a wheel actuator and a hand wheel actuator, respectively. This offers potential advantages regarding the packaging, vehicle handling, vehicle safety and the steering feel. The latter has to be generated by means of suitable control algorithms for the hand wheel actuator. On the same hand, driving simulators play an increasingly important role in the automotive industry, due to the rising pressure concerning development time and costs. Attempts are made to improve the driving feel and the associated steering feel in driving simulators, where the control of the hand wheel actuator is consequently one of the most decisive tasks for the performance of the driving simulator.

Steer-by-wire vehicles and the driving simulators should not only provide an usual steering feel just as in today’s conventional steering systems such as an electric power steering, but the steering feel should be simply tuned to meet the individual driver’s requests. For this, a still ongoing challenge is the computation of the desired steering torque which provides a realistic and flexible steering feel.

Methods

• Formal and objective description of the steering properties of an electric power steering system
• Development of a MATLAB/Simulink model for the design and analysis of concepts for the computation of the desired steering torque
• Design of models for the computation of the desired steering torque
• Identification of the most promising model, with the aim to reproduce the steering feel of an electric power steering system mounted on a steering test bench
• Implementation of the steering torque generation in a driving simulator and on a experimental steer-by-wire vehicle

Project Duration
06/2010 – 06/2013

Contact
Steve Fankem