Robust Control for Steer-by-Wire Vehicles

The design and analysis of steer-by-wire systems at the actuation and operational level is explored. At the actuation level, robust force feedback control using inverse disturbance observer structure and active observer algorithm is applied to enhance the robustness vs non-modelled dynamics and uncertain driver bio-impedance. At the operational level, the robustness aspects vs parameter uncertainties in vehicle dynamics and driver bio-impedance are issued and for a given target coupling dynamics between driver and vehicle the design task is converted to a model-matching problem. H_∞ techniques and active observer algorithms are used to design the steer-by-wire controller. Robustness issues at both levels are covered by mapping stability bounds in the space of physical uncertain parameters.Naim Bajçinca has been working as a researcher at German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Oberpfaffenhofen since 1998. He has graduated studies on Physics (1994) and Electrical Engineering (1995) at the University of Prishtina. His main interests include methods of robust and nonlinear control, model-reference control, uncertain time-delay systems with applications on haptics, active vehicle steering and master-slave systems.Rui Cortesão received the B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering., M.Sc. in Systems and Automation and Ph.D. in Control and Instrumentation from the University of Coimbra in 1994, 1997, and 2003, respectively. He has been visiting researcher at DLR for more than two years (1998–2003), working on compliant motion control, data fusion and steer-by-wire. In 2002 he was visiting researcher at Stanford University, working on haptic manipulation. He is Assistant Professor at the Electrical Engineering Department of the University of Coimbra since 2003 and researcher of the Institute for Systems and Robotics (ISR-Coimbra) since 1994. His research interest include data fusion, control, fuzzy systems, neural networks and robotics.Markus Hauschild received his Diploma in Mechatronics from Munich University of Applied Sciences in 2002. He joined the DLR Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics in 2001 working on control strategies for Harmonic Drive gears. His research interests include human-machine-interfaces, x-by-wire, and modeling of biomedical systems. In 2003 he was visiting researcher at National Yunlin University of Science and Technology, Taiwan, developing iterative learning control for compensation of periodic disturbances. In the European ENACTIVE network of excellence he is the DLR coordinator for the “actuators and sensors for haptic interfaces” activities. Presently he is a PhD student at University of Southern California in the Department of Biomedical Engineering.