Road Environment Aware Control Framework for Steering Feel Generation in Steer-by-Wire Systems

Abstract

In steer-by-wire (SBW) systems, where the steering wheel and the tire are not physically connected, the steering feel is artificially generated regardless of road conditions. Typically, SBW systems generate steering feel based on steering angle to steering torque models to provide specific reaction torques in response to the driver's steering input. However, since the steering wheel is not mechanically connected to the tire, the driver cannot feel the road surface condition. This article proposes a novel control algorithm framework that can extract and transfer road surface information while still following the desired steering feel model. The steering feel generation control and road wheel control are integrated to achieve this goal. Specifically, we propose a reference steering model (RSM) for steering feel generation and bilateral control (BiC) for integrated steering wheel and road wheel control. This allows us to reflect the road surface condition without changing the steering feel model or identifying the road surface parameters. We validate the effectiveness of our proposed control through experiments using an SBW test vehicle.