Experimental Study of Electric Vehicle Yaw Rate Tracking Control Based on Differential Steering

This paper investigates the experimental study of differential steering control of a four-wheel independently driven (FWID) electric vehicle (EV) based on the steer-by-wire (SBW) system. As each wheel of FWID vehicle can be independently driven, differential steering is realized by applying different driven torques to the front-two wheels. Firstly, the principle of the differential steering is analyzed based on the SBW system. When the differential steering is activated, the driver’s steering request is sent to the vehicle’s ECU. Then, the ECU gives different control signals to the front-left and front-right wheels, generating an external steering force on the steering components. The external steering force pushes the steering components to turn corresponding to the driver’s request. Secondly, to test the feasibility of differential steering, a FWID EV is assembled and the vehicle is equipped with four independently driven in-wheel motors. The corresponding control system is designed. Finally, the field test of the vehicle based on the proposed differential steering control strategy is performed. In the experiment, the fixed yaw rate tracking and varied yaw rate tracking maneuvers are employed. In the fixed yaw rate tracking, the vehicle can track the desired yaw rate well with differential steering. In addition, the vehicle can track the varied yaw rate with proposed differential steering. The test results confirm the feasibility and effectiveness of the differential steering. By using the differential steering, a backup steering is established without additional components; thus, the costs can be reduced and the reliability of the vehicle steering system can be enhanced, significantly.