Abstract
This paper describes a fault-tolerant steer-by-wire road wheel control system. With dual motor and dual microcontroller architecture, this system has the capability to tolerate single-point failures without degrading the control system performance. The arbitration bus, mechanical arrangement of motors, and the developed control algorithm allow the system to reconfigure itself automatically in the event of a single-point fault, and assure a smooth reconfiguration process. Both simulation and experimental results illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed fault-tolerant control system.
Highlights
With electronically controlled steering systems such as steerby-wire systems, there is a great potential for enhanced safety of the occupants in a vehicle so equipped, due to the fast and precise intervention that is in contrast to the limited reaction time of the driver [1]
In a steer-by-wire system, there is no mechanical connection between steering wheel and road wheel for steer-bywire, active steering can be implemented by inserting an electronic control system between driver’s input from steer wheel and road wheel drive system [5, 6]
The fault-tolerance test of the system was performed on the road wheel control subsystem and the test results are illustrated in Figures 8 and 9
Summary
With electronically controlled steering systems such as steerby-wire systems, there is a great potential for enhanced safety of the occupants in a vehicle so equipped, due to the fast and precise intervention that is in contrast to the limited reaction time of the driver [1]. In a steer-by-wire system, there is no mechanical connection between steering wheel and road wheel for steer-bywire, active steering can be implemented by inserting an electronic control system between driver’s input from steer wheel and road wheel drive system [5, 6] This electronic control system employing sensors, actuators, communication channels, and microcontrollers ties the steering wheel and road wheels to each other. To overcome the above-mentioned potential fail-safe issues, a dual motor, dual microcontroller control system architecture for steer-by-wire road wheel operation is proposed in this paper. With this architecture, each motor uses a smart motor controller (SMC) to form an inner motor torque control loop. In this case, the steer-by-wire control system switches to single-motor operation automatically without any intervention from master or slave microcontrollers.
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