Development of a Fault Tolerant Steer-By-Wire Steering System

Steer-By-Wire will be the steering technology of the future. The mechanical connection between the hand wheel and the front axle will become obsolete. Independent electronically controlled actuators will set the road wheel steering angles and will provide force feedback to the driver. This paper presents the approach to establish a production intended steer-by-wire solution in two steps. In a first step a fail safe steer-by-wire system with a mechanical backup is developed which meets the functional and performance requirements of today's passenger vehicles. In the second step this concept is expanded to a future fault tolerant system architecture without any mechanical backup.