Development of a low-cost steering system simulator

The Steering system is the most important system for a vehicle, in terms of safety and driving feel. But in many cases, experiments to improve the steering feel using a real vehicle are very difficult in the aspects of repeatability, safety and money. Repeatability in testing steering systems is very important because the steering feel for a driver varies according to the environmental conditions. In addition to that, steering tests using vehicle are so dangerous that the driver might not concentrate on the tests. In this paper, a new steering system simulator using the front part of a steering and suspension system is described. This simulator allows cheap, safe, and repeatable testing of the steering system compared with the real vehicle test.