Steering Force Feedback for Human-Machine-Interface Automotive Experiments

Driving-simulator fidelity is usually defined by the quality of its visual and motion cueing system. However, the quality of its haptic cues is also very important and is determined by both hardware and control properties. Most experiments with haptic steering systems employ commercially available systems and do not address the system's fidelity. The goal of this paper is to offer guidelines for the development of hardware, performance evaluation, and system control in order to engineer realistic haptic cues on the steering wheel. A relatively low-cost solution for hardware is deployed, consisting of a velocity-controlled three-phase brushless servomotor, of which its high-bandwidth control allows for a realistic representation of forces. A method is presented to overcome electromagnetic interference produced by the industrial servomotor and the controller through careful amplification and filtering. To test the system, different inertia-spring-damper systems were simulated and evaluated in time and frequency domain. In conclusion, the designed system allowed reproduction of a large range of steering-wheel dynamics and forces. As a result, the developed system constitutes an efficient haptic device for human-machine-interface automotive experiments.