Studies on Influencing Factors of Driver Steering Torque Feedback

Steering torque feedback, or steering feel, is widely regarded as an important aspect of driver interface to road feel. To generate a steering feel with the appropriate level of fidelity required by a driver-vehicle system or a driving simulator, it is essential to gain a good understanding of various important influencing factors of steering torque feedback. This paper presents a comprehensive study and analysis of internal and external factors that strongly affect steering torque feedback. A steering torque feedback model with sufficient fidelity is established and verified as the base for this study. The individual- and collective-level influences of these factors on steering torque feedback are analyzed in both time domain and frequency domain, with guidelines provided on how to properly use these influencing factors to control their negative effects in modeling steering torque feedback. Extensive simulation and comparison with in-vehicle experimental data point to the soundness of the proposed models and methods for driver steering torque feedback. The analysis results in this paper give insights on how to design and model the steering torque feedback as it affects the steering feel when considering different driver-vehicle systems such as steer-by-wire vehicles or for high fidelity driver-in-the-loop simulation.