Human Power Applied to Manual Backup Steering on Off-Road Vehicles

The difficulties and complexities associated with manual backup steering have increased as off-road vehicles have become larger. System components must be optimally designed to produce the most efficient manual steering. To efficiently transfer power from the human operator to the steered wheels, the characteristics of the steering wheel with metering pump must be impedance matched to the operator. Knowledge of the torque-speed characteristics of a human, as related to a steering wheel, is required to determine the maximum power transfer point for impedance matching.

Published literature provides little information on human power capabilities in this context. To better define the human power characteristics a study was undertaken at the John Deere Product Engineering Center, Waterloo, Iowa. This paper deals with the results of that study.