Artificial Steering Feel Design for Steer-by-wire Vehicles

Drivers use steering feel to obtain information about the road and tire dynamics that aids them in driving tasks like curve negotiation. Steer-by-wire vehicles, due to the mechanical decoupling of the front tires and handwheel, do not have any inherent steering feel and, as a result, drivers lose this important source of driving feedback. Creating an artificial steering feel in these vehicles allows the driver to continue to access this useful information. This paper proposes using a simple vehicle model simulation to design a realistic artificial steering feel. Conventional steering feel performance measures are used to evaluate and tune an artificial steering feel to obtain desired characteristics. A steer-by-wire vehicle performing a dynamic weave test is used to obtain experimental performance measures for this designed feel and a comparison is made with the simulated performance measures to verify the validity of the simple model simulation design technique proposed.