Adaptive Control for Virtual Steering Characteristics on Electric Vehicle Using Steer-by-Wire System

This paper describes an adaptive control to realize the desired steering characteristics on a vehicle. As is well known, the steering characteristics indicate handling performance on a vehicle and are important for safe driving. In this paper, a strategy to adjust it to a driver's preference easily using a steer-by-wire system is proposed. The control system including the proposed method intervenes only when the front tire cornering stiffness undergoes many changes. Then, the estimated self-aligning torque is fed back to the steering wheel so that a driver can feel reaction torque from the road. This is one of the remarkable features in the proposed steer-by-wire system. Numerical simulation and experiment are carried out to show the validity of the proposed method.