A Steering Wheel System and Controller for the Driving Simulator

In driving simulator, the driver manipulating the steering wheel can not only be feeling authentic as the real vehicle but also get additional information of the vehicle state and road conditions. For this purpose, a steeling wheel system was detailed designed. A bicycle model was used to analyze the dynamic behaviour of a simplified four-wheel vehicle model and applied to compute the reaction torque. After modeling the steering column and the feedback motor, the state equation of the steering wheel was deduced. The control without PID, with ordinary PID and RBF network PID were adopted to control the feedback motor to generate desired torque. Simulation in matlab/simulink shows that the steering wheel has good performance and the RBF network PID controller has better performance and can satisfy the requirement of the reaction torque. This study will be a guide research for future driving simulator.