IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 56, NO.

5, MAY 2009

1585

Adaptive Control for Virtual Steering Characteristics

on Electric Vehicle Using Steer-by-Wire System
Yousuke Yamaguchi and Toshiyuki Murakami, Member, IEEE

AbstractThis paper describes an adaptive control to realize

the desired steering characteristics on a vehicle. As is well known,
the steering characteristics indicate handling performance on a
vehicle and are important for safe driving. In this paper, a strategy
to adjust it to a drivers preference easily using a Steer-by-Wire
system is proposed. The control system including the proposed
method intervenes only when the front tire cornering stiffness
undergoes many changes. Then, the estimated self-aligning torque
is fed back to the steering wheel so that a driver can feel reaction
torque from the road. This is one of the remarkable features in
the proposed Steer-by-Wire system. Numerical simulation and
experiment are carried out to show the validity of the proposed
method.
Index TermsParameter identification, steer-by-wire system,
steering characteristics, steering control, vehicle state estimation.

I. I NTRODUCTION

Fig. 1. Outline view of steer-by-wire system.

DVANCED Cruise-Assist Highway Systems, Advanced

Safety Vehicle (ASV), and other development concepts
related to Intelligent Transport Systems are expected to support
the reduction of burden imposed on the driver greatly and
improve vehicle dynamics control [1][15]. Some papers have
reported estimation strategies of road condition [13], [14], [17].
Safety driving for drivers has been analyzed in [16]. Moreover,
several control strategies for stable vehicle motion have been
proposed in [17][22]. In the category of ASV, particularly
active safety technology, many control methods have been
proposed to realize safe yaw motion of a vehicle. One approach
for yaw dynamics improvement is to control individual wheel
driving/braking force, thereby obtains the moment that is necessary to counteract the undesired yaw motion [2]. Moreover,
some of these technologies are in practical use now. The other
approach is to command additional steering angles to create the
counteracting moment [3]. Lately, X-by-Wire control systems
have begun to be used in this field [4]. X-by-Wire control
systems in automotive applications refer to systems where the
input device used by the driver is connected to the actuation
power subsystem by electrical wires, as opposed to being connected by mechanical or hydraulic means. The X in the X-byWire is replaced by throttle, brake, steer, and so on. Fig. 1 shows
a photograph of a Steer-by-Wire system used in this paper.
Manuscript received May 11, 2008; revised November 4, 2008. First published November 25, 2008; current version published April 29, 2009. This
work was supported in part by Grant in Aid for the 21st Century Center of
Excellence for System Design: Paradigm Shift from Intelligence to Life from
the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sport, and Technology in Japan.
The authors are with the Department of System Design Engineering, Keio
University, Yokohama 223-8522, Japan (e-mail: yamayou@sum.sd.keio.ac.jp;
mura@sd.keio.ac.jp).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TIE.2008.2010171

Recent advance of electric power steering systems make it

possible to realize intelligent assist of drivers steering action
[5], [6], [21]. In the Steer-by-Wire system, the direct connection
between the driver and wheel assembly is removed, and dual
actuators are introduced to control the driver interface and the
steering system instead. In the conventional steering system,
there is a mechanical linkage between the steering wheel and
the front-wheels, so active steering control is hard to apply
because of the interference with the driver. In addition, it
requires physical modification of its mechanism to change
steering characteristics of the vehicle.
On the other hand, the potential ability of Steer-by-Wire
system has received considerable attention from the automotive
industry. The advantage of the system brigs an important feature
to control the steering wheel and the front-wheel steering
independently. Therefore, it is possible to realize the desired
steering characteristics without drivers uncomfortable feeling.
Furthermore, the relation between the steering wheel and the
front-wheel steering becomes more flexible, so various sophisticated design of power steering system can be expected [4].
Several ideas using Steer-by-Wire system have been proposed. Segawa et al. [7] implement lateral acceleration and
yaw rate feedback control system to the vehicle with a Steerby-Wire system and show more improved driving stability
than differential brake control. In [8], Yih and Gerdes propose
a method for altering a vehicles handling characteristics by
augmenting the drivers steering command with full vehicle
state feedback, which are chassis sideslip angle and yaw rate, by
using a combination of global positioning system and inertial
navigation system sensors. The aforementioned strategies are
powerful, but there are still several issues shown below.
1) It is assumed that vehicle parameter is known in advance,
and controller is sensitive against parameter uncertainties.

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 56, NO. 5, MAY 2009

2) There is no feedback to reflect variation of road surface

to the steering wheel.
The improvement of the first issue is important. In particular,
the tire cornering stiffness, which is one of important vehicle
parameters, is affected by road condition, tire characteristics,
and so on. This means that it is difficult to realize accurate
vehicle yaw motion control by simple state feedback in the
practical implementation. The second issue is about vehicle
maneuverability. An adequate torque transmission from road
to the driver through steering wheel is very important for the
driver to achieve safety driving of the vehicle.
To address the aforementioned issues, this paper focuses on a
realization of the desired steering characteristics independently
of road condition. In order to modify the steering characteristics
according to the change of road surface, an adaptive control
method based on a Steer-by-Wire system is proposed. The
adaptive algorithm utilizes lateral acceleration observer with
parameter identification. It is one of remarkable points of this
paper. The proposed method, which is active front steering, sets
driver definable front cornering stiffness and adjusts steering
characteristics by vehicle full state feedback control, so it
requires yaw rate and chassis sideslip angle which show vehicle
lateral dynamics. Yaw rate is measurable easily by low-cost
gyro sensor. On the other hand, the chassis sideslip angle is
estimated by an adaptive observer [9]. The control system
including the proposed method intervenes only when the front
tire cornering stiffness undergoes great changes that the vehicle
motion gets into a situation where it is difficult for the driver
to handle. In the proposed approach, it possible to improve
handling performance of the vehicle according to such a critical
situation. Moreover, self-aligning torque which is part of the
tire force is estimated from information of steering motor and
vehicle model, and is fed back to the Steer-by-Wire control
system for drivers perception of road condition.
This paper is organized as follows. In Section II, the vehicle model and lateral dynamics is introduced. In Section III,
adaptive control method for virtual steering characteristics is
proposed. Then, motor control method in Steer-by-Wire system
is described in Section IV. In Sections V and VI, the numerical
and experimental results are shown to verify the effectiveness
of the proposed method. Finally, conclusions are described in
Section VII.
II. V EHICLE D YNAMICS
A. Tire Force
Fig. 2 shows tire forces generated at front-left wheel. Parameters of vehicle dynamics are shown in Table I. F x and F y are
driving force and lateral force. F y is generated by sideslipping
of each tire. CF means cornering force. In the linear region of
tire characteristics, CF is composed of cornering stiffness Cf
and
CF = Cf .

(1)

From Fig. 2, relation between Fy and CF at front-left wheel

is represented as
Fy =

CF
.
cos

(2)

Fig. 2.

Tire force at front-left wheel. (a) Tire forces. (b) Self-aligning torque.
TABLE I
PARAMETERS OF VEHICLE DYNAMICS

Fig. 3.

Vehicle model.

Moreover, while a vehicle is turning, tire force acting on the

steering system tends to resist steering motion away from the
straight-ahead position. This torque is tire self-aligning torque,
which is a function of the steering geometry, particularly caster
angle, and the manner in which the tire deforms to generate
lateral force. In Fig. 2, c is the caster trail, the distance from the
tire center to the point on the ground about that the tire pivots
as a result of the wheel caster angle, p is the pneumatic trail,
the distance from the center of tire to the application of lateral
force. Self-aligning torque is given by
SAT = (c + p ) (Fy + Ffry ) .

(3)

B. Yaw Motion of a Vehicle

Vehicle dynamics in the horizontal plane is represented by
four-wheeled model, as shown in Fig. 3. From Figs. 2 and 3,
tire sideslip angle at a front-left wheel is given as follows:


V sin + lf
(4)
= arctan
f .
V cos L2

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III. C ONTROL FOR S TEERING C HARACTERISTICS

An approach to change steering characteristics depending on
the drivers preference is proposed. This method is composed
of the following three parts. First, a linear observer of is
introduced. Next, identification approach of cornering stiffness,
which is a parameter that the observer and control method need
for adaptation to various driving conditions, is described. At
the last part, cornering stiffness at front tire changing control is
explained.
A. Estimation of Chassis Sideslip Angle
Fig. 4.

Steering characteristics.

Slip angle at each tire is calculated as well as (4). In this paper,

driving force F x at each tire is supposed to be equal to zero.
Therefore, the yaw motion equation for the vehicle model is
written as follows:
M y = (Fy + Ffry ) cos f + Frly + Frry
L
J = lf cos f (Fy + Ffry ) + sin f (Fy Ffry )
2
lr (Frly + Frry )

(5)

(6)

where y is lateral acceleration at COG of vehicle. Then, under

the assumption that |V | 0 and ||, |(L/2V )|  1, it is also
assumed that tire force at left side, right side is the same [21].
Therefore, (5) and (6) are rewritten as




lf
lr
(7)
M y = 2Cf + f 2Cr
V
V




lf
lr
J = 2lf Cf + f + 2lr Cr . (8)
V
V
Moreover, from Fig. 3, y is related to and as follows:
y = (V sin + V cos + V cos )
V ( + ).

(9)

Therefore, the state equation for vehicle model is given as

(10) from (7)(9)
x = Ax + bf
x = [ ]T

f +Cr
2 CM
V
A=
r Cr
2 lf Cf l
J
2Cf
b=[M
V

2lf Cf T
J ]

r Cr
1 2 lf CMf l
V2

lf2 Cf +lr2 Cr
JV

(10)

Equation (10) has state variables of vehicle here defined by

chassis sideslip angle and yaw rate. lf Cf lr Cr is called steering characteristics and indicates vehicle motion behavior, as
shown in Fig. 4. Then, the steering characteristics are classified
below
lf Cf lr Cr > 0
lf Cf lr Cr < 0

over steering
under steering

lf Cf lr Cr = 0

neutral steering.

(11)

Before now, linear observer using only as measurable

state variable has been used as a method to estimate chassis
sideslip angle. However, this method has a serious problem.
When lf Cf lr Cr is equal to zero, the system (10) falls into
unobservable. Then, y is added to output equation and it is
rewritten as follows:
y = cx + df
y = [ y ]T


0
1
c=
V a11 V (1 + a12 )
d = [ 0 V b1 ]T

(12)

where a, b are elements of the matrix A, b. By (12), full

observability is satisfied in any condition. The observer is
designed as follows:
) .
= A
x
x + bf + K (i) (y y

(13)

This observer is called Lateral Acceleration Observer (LAO)

[10]. Here, using poles of the observer 1 , 2 , observer gain
matrix K (i) is decided as
 J1 2 (lf Cf lr Cr )

1
1
2
2C
C
(l
+l
)
V
r
r
f
f
(14)
K (1) =
M (lf2 Cf +lr2 Cr ) .
1 2
J(lf Cf lr Cr )
When lf Cf lr Cr = 0, K (i) changes to K (2) in order to
(1)
improve the problem that k22 , which is an element of K (1) ,
have to be set to


1
1 2 1
V
(2)
K =
JV
2(CfM+Cr) . (15)
1
2
2(lf2 Cf +lr2 Cr )
Therefore, the estimated converges to even if lf Cf lr Cr
is equal to zero.
B. Identification of Cornering Stiffness
Parameter uncertainty of a vehicle is not considered when
LAO described in the above is applied to the system. Therefore,
In order to solve this problem,
the estimation error remains in .
parameter identification method is incorporated into LAO. The
most important parameter is tire cornering stiffness, because
the value changes often depending on driving condition. Here,
identification method of cornering stiffness at front/rear tire
based on the weighted recursive least-squares (RLS) algorithm

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 56, NO. 5, MAY 2009

[9] is applied. The conventional method [9] is based on yaw

moment equation (8). Then, the output equation is as follows:
y1 = T
1 1
y1 = J
1 = [ Cf Cr ]T


2lf + Vlf f



1 =
2lr Vlr

Then, the relation between Q(k) and Q(k 1) is computed as

follows:


Q(k 1) 2 T
1
2 Q(k 1)
.
Q(k 1)
Q(k) =

+ T
2 (k)Q(k 1) 2 (k)
(23)
Moreover, the relation between Z(k) and Z(k 1) is
expressed as

(16)

where is the chassis sideslip angle estimated by LAO. However, the moment of vehicle inertia J and used in (16) are
difficult to measure with high accuracy. The low-cost yaw
rate sensor is available, but yaw rate accelerations sensor is
expensive. Then, the time differentiation of the yaw rate may be
calculated, but the sensor noise is emphasized in the controller.
This is confirmed by experiments shown in the latter part. To
improve this issue, this paper proposes the parameter identification method based on lateral motion equation (7) instead of (8)
y2 = T
2 2

Z(k) = Z(k 1) + 2 (k)y2 (k).

(24)

Finally, the identified cornering stiffness (k)

is derived from
(23) and (24) as



Q(k 1) 2 y2 (k) T
2 (k 1)

1) +
.
(k)
= (k
+ T
2 (k)Q(k 1) 2 (k)
(25)
is restructured as follows:
Then, LAO updating

x + b()
f + K (i) ()(y
)
= A(theta)
y
x

(26)

x + d()
f.
= c()
y

(27)

y2 = M y

C. Adaptive Control for Virtual Steering Characteristics

2 = [ Cf Cr ]T


2 + Vlf f
.

2 =
2 Vlr

The control law based on [8] which realizes the desired

cornering stiffness at front tire by active front steering is
proposed. First, reference value of cornering stiffness at front
tire is defined as

(17)

The advantage of this method is that the measured variable

y is directly available by acceleration sensor. If yaw moment
equation is used, it is necessary to differentiate measured for
obtaining .
Additionally, mass M is measurable very easily in
case load on the vehicle changes. However, it is more difficult
to know true value of vehicle inertia J in that case. Here,
weighted RLS algorithm is used. The error E(i) is defined as
E(i) = y2res (i) T
2 (i) 2 (i).

(18)

Cf,th = Cf (1 + )

where is the evaluation index of Cf . The controller intervenes

only when absolute value || is more than th which is the limit
value of . In other words, shows acceptable variation ratio
of the cornering stiffness to guarantee the desired steering characteristics. This constraint means the controller assists steering
only when the vehicle motion gets into a situation where it is
difficult for the driver to handle. The steering angle input is
designed as
f = K + K + Ksw ures

In addition, evaluation function J() is set as follows:

J() =

k


ki

(E(i))

(19)

i=0

where is forgetting factor that is a weighting gain of past data

in parameter identification process. In order to minimize J(),
(k) is calculated by

(k)
= Q(k)Z(k)
 k
1

ki
T
Q(k) =
2 (i) 2 (i)
i=0

Z(k) =

 k

i=0

(20)
(21)

ki

2 (i)y2 (i) .

(28)

(22)

(29)

where ures is the response of steering wheel angle, K , K ,

Ksw are feedback gains. Then, the desired front cornering
stiffness Cf is set as
Cf = Cf (1 +
)

(30)

and the gains as

K =

K =

lf

Ksw =

1+

Grp

(31)

where
is the desired change factor in identified front cornering
stiffness Cf , Grp is rack-and-pinion gear ratio. Substituting the
feedback law (29) into (10) yields the state space equation
in advance,
with the new cornering stiffness Cf . By setting
adaptive control to meet the original cornering stiffness reasonably is realized. Because vehicles steering characteristics

YAMAGUCHI AND MURAKAMI: ADAPTIVE CONTROL FOR VIRTUAL STEERING CHARACTERISTICS

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Fig. 6. Impedance control for the steering wheel.

Fig. 5.

Steer-by-Wire system model.

are directly influenced by tire cornering stiffness, this change

can make handling performance of the vehicle oversteering or
understeering depending on the value of
.
IV. I MPEDANCE C ONTROL FOR S TEERING W HEEL
Fig. 5 shows the schematic of the Steer-by-Wire system. This
system has no mechanical linkage between the steering wheel
and the front-wheels. h is input torque of the driver, u and
l are the torques generated by the steering wheel actuator and
front-wheels actuator, respectively. Moreover, u and l mean
the rotation angle of actuators.
In general, the response from the tire is important information for the driver to know the road condition. However, the
torque from the front-wheels is not transmitted to the driver in
a conventional Steer-by-Wire control system.
In this paper, the estimated self-aligning torque is fed back
to the steering wheel so that a driver can feel reaction torque
from the road. Using lateral acceleration y, lateral forces are
expressed as


M
Cf Cr
1
y (lf + lr ) + f
. (32)
Fy + Ffry = 2
Cr
V
Cf + Cr
Substituting (32) and identified cornering stiffness Cf , Cr
into (3) yields

SAT = 2(c + p )

M
1
y (lf + lr ) + f
V
Cr

Cf Cr
.
Cf + Cr
(33)

Besides, impedance control law is applied to the steering

system in order to combine power assist for drivers input
torque via steering wheel and active return of self-aligning
torque smoothly. The concept of active return is simple and
is essentially a control loop producing a component of overall
torque demand, which acts to power the steering back to the
center position. Fig. 6 shows the block diagram of impedance
control system. Under the assumption that friction torque in the
each steering actuator is canceled by disturbance observer [11],
angular acceleration reference uref at steering wheel actuator is
designed as follows:

1
Dc ures Kc ures + (Khum h KSAT SAT )
uref =
Jc
(34)

where Jc , Dc , Kc are impedance gains, Khum , KSAT are scale

factors for power assist and perception of road condition. The
larger Khum , the more the power assist works. The larger
KSAT , the more the driver feels change of the road condition.
The drivers input torque h is obtained by reaction torque
estimation observer [12] at steering actuator. Moreover, selfaligning torque is calculated by (33). By (34), transient response of upper motor is adjustable by selecting Kc , Dc , which
is related to both comfort of driving and drivers perception of
road condition. If uref is equivalent to the response of angular
acceleration ures , the transfer function is calculated as
Khum h KSAT SAT
n2
2
2
s + 2n + n
Kc

Kc
Dc
n =
=
Jc
2 Jc Kc

ures (s) =

(35)
(36)

where and n are damping ratio and natural angular frequency, respectively. By selecting , n appropriately, it is possible to adjust sensitivity of drivers perception against change
of road condition such as oscillation due to Shimmy effect. The
whole control system of vehicle is summarized in Fig. 7. As
shown in this figure, the impedance control is employed in the
steering wheel actuator, and adaptive control for virtual steering
characteristics is applied to the front-wheels actuator. These
two controllers are realized separately by using Steer-by-Wire
system. This is an important point in the proposed approach.
V. S IMULATION
To verify the validity of the proposed estimation method
of vehicle parameters and control method for virtual steering
characteristics, two kinds of simulation are carried out. One is
the parameter identification of vehicle. The other is a realization
of the desired steering characteristics. The parameters and gains
used in simulation are summarized in Table II.
A. Estimation of Vehicle Parameters
First, the proposed parameter identification method is compared to the following two conventional methods, LAO in
which vehicle parameters are constant and LAO using Cf , Cr
based on yaw moment equation. Here, the drivers input ures in
each case is shown in Fig. 8(a). In this figure, the upper motor
response ures and the lower motor response lres well coincide
with ures by the disturbance observer-based motor control.
Here, the velocity of vehicle V is set as 5 m/s. The cornering
stiffness Cf , Cr identified by the conventional approach and the
proposed method are shown in Fig. 8(b) and (c), respectively.
This result shows that the proposed method based on (7) as
well as the conventional approach based on (8) estimates the

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Fig. 7. Steering control system.

TABLE II
PARAMETERS AND GAINS IN SIMULATION AND EXPERIMENT

the actual front cornering stiffness Cf is equal to the desired

front cornering stiffness Cf . From these results, it is found that
the desired responses of both chassis sideslip angle and yaw
rate are realized according to the desired cornering stiffness
by the proposed control method.
VI. E XPERIMENT

cornering stiffness well. Fig. 8(d)(f) shows the responses of

true and estimated vehicle state variables. In case the observer
with fixed-parameter is used, it is found that the influence
of parameter uncertainty causes the error between the true
value and estimated one in response. On the other hand,
the estimated chassis sideslip angle by the use of LAO with
identified cornering stiffness shows the smooth convergence to
the true value. These results show that the proposed parameter
identification based on (8) is effective.
B. Control for Steering Characteristics
Next, in order to confirm the validity of adaptive control
for virtual steering characteristics, alternative simulation is
implemented. In this simulation as well as previous one, the
same ucmd shown in Fig. 8(a) is assumed as drivers input. Here,
the value of th which defines the range of application to the
steering system is 0.3 and
has the same value. Because
is
positive, the desired front cornering stiffness Cf is bigger than
actual Cf .
The results are shown in Fig. 9. As shown in Fig. 9(a),
rotational angle of lower actuator in Steer-by-Wire system
lcmd , that is f , is bigger than ures because the controlled
input is added so that virtual front cornering stiffness becomes
bigger than actual. Fig. 9(c) is the vehicle responses under the
proposed control. Fig. 9(d) shows the vehicle behavior when

In this section, the experimental results of impedance control

for the Steer-by-Wire system, the estimation method of the
vehicle parameters, and adaptive control for virtual steering
characteristics are shown. Fig. 10 shows the experimental vehicle and the road condition which is dry asphalt. Moreover,
the configuration of the vehicle is shown in Fig. 11. Parameters
used in the experiment as well as simulation is shown in
Table II.
A. Impedance Control for Steer-by-Wire System
In order to confirm the validity of the proposed control for
the Steer-by-Wire system, a slalom of the vehicle is carried
out. Here, and n is set as 1.22 and 0.90, respectively. The
vehicle velocity V is 6.0 m/s. The response of each steering
actuator and the estimated self-aligning torque are shown in
Fig. 12. As described before, the self-aligning torque is part of
tire force that is related to the reaction torque lreac . Here, lreac
is estimated by the use of reaction torque estimation observer
as comparison value of self-aligning torque. In Fig. 12, SAT
calculated from (33) has similar tendency of lreac response.
This means that the calculation of SAT is effective for the
feedback to realize the drivers perception of road condition
from a viewpoint of practical implementation. In addition,
it is confirmed that stable response of rotational angle and
angular velocity of upper motor are achieved by the proposed
control method. In Fig. 13 which indicates relation between
the driver input torque and steering wheel angle, the estimated
human input torque h decreases stably according to a decrease
of absolute value ures by the impedance control. From these
results, it is verified that transmission of road condition and
power assist is realized by the proposed impedance control
method.

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Fig. 8. Simulation: results of system identification and estimation. (a) Rotational angles response in Steer-by-Wire system. (b) Cf , Cr identification based on
f , C
r based on J .
f , C
r based on M y.
J .
(c) Cf , Cr identification based on M y. (d) LAO with fixed parameter. (e) LAO with C
(f) LAO with C

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f , C
r . (c) Controlled
Fig. 9. Simulation: Result of adaptive control for virtual steering characteristics (th : 0.3,
: 0.3). (a) Controlled steering angle. (b) C
vehicle behavior (Cf : 3800, Cr : 4500). (d) Vehicle behavior (Cf : 4920, Cr : 4500).

Fig. 10. Experimental setup and driving condition. (a) Experimental vehicle.
(b) Road condition.

B. Estimation of Vehicle Parameters

Experiments of the vehicle slalom are carried out for vehicle
parameter identification. As well as simulation, the proposed
method is compared with conventional methods. The vehicle
velocity in each experiment is 6 m/s. Fig. 14 shows the results of
conventional parameter identification. The results of proposed
parameter identification are shown in Fig. 15. In Fig. 14(d),
the value of is obtained by the time differentiation of

Fig. 11.

Configuration of the vehicle.

measured . Here, the true value of in each experiment is supposed to be the value of simulation results. These simulations
are carried out according to the experimental data f , steadystate value of Cf , Cr , and vehicle velocity V by using (10).

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Fig. 12. Experiment: responses of steering actuators.

Fig. 15. Experiment: proposed parameter identification and estimation (based

r
f , C
on lateral motion equation). (a) Front-wheels actuator angle. (b) C
identification. (c) Response of . (d) Measured y.

Fig. 13. Experiment: relation between h and steering wheel angle.

Fig. 14. Experiment: conventional parameter identification and estimation

(based on yaw moment equation). (a) Front-wheels actuator angle. (b) Cf , Cr
identification. (c) Response of . (d) Measured .

Fig. 16. Experiment: result of adaptive control for virtual steering characf , C
r
: 0.05). (a) Responses of steering actuators. (b) C
teristics (th : 0.3,
identification and . (c) Response of y. (d) Response of . (e) Response of .
(f) Vehicle velocity.

In these experiments, LAO with fixed-parameter always has

estimation error because of model error. In Fig. 14(b), there
are some sharp fluctuations in the estimation values. This
estimation method is based on moment of vehicle inertia J and
,
however, the obtained has significant noise, as shown in
Fig. 14(d). Therefore, the noise is thought to be aftereffects
of identification of cornering stiffness. It is contemplated that
this fluctuations leads estimation error of . On the other hand,
the proposed method realizes better identification of cornering
stiffness, as shown in Fig. 15(b) because the value of measured
y is smooth, as shown in Fig. 15(d). The aforementioned results

show that the proposed parameter identification strategy based

on the lateral motion equation (8) is effective for practical
implementation.
C. Control for Steering Characteristics
In this section, the experimental results of adaptive control of
virtual steering characteristics are shown. The value of th is set
as 0.3, the value of
is 0.05. Fig. 16(a) shows the response of
rotational angle at each steering actuator. Fig. 16(b) shows Cf ,
Cr and the evaluation index . In these figures, the intervention

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 56, NO. 5, MAY 2009

of controller is observed after is over th , and the controller

input is added so that front cornering stiffness becomes bigger
due to
. The vehicle behavior is shown in Fig. 16(c)(e). The
simulation results are obtained according to the experimental
data f , steady-state value of Cf , Cr and vehicle velocity V by
using (10). They are supposed to be true or desired values as
well as previous experiments. In Fig. 16(d), accurate estimation
of chassis sideslip angle is realized. Moreover, experimental
results of and y are pretty close to simulation results of them.
Therefore, it would appear that steering characteristics of this
experimental vehicle become desired.
VII. C ONCLUSION
In this paper, an application to design steering wheel characteristics via a Steer-by-Wire system and a control method which
helps the driver recognition of the road condition have been
proposed. The former is equivalent to physically changing the
cornering stiffness at front tires, so very easy to realize the steering characteristics depending on the factor
. Additionally, by
limiting the range of the application, this control is performed
only when needed and the range is able to be adjusted with th
very simply. The latter method realizes at the same time the
following three things, drivers perception of road condition,
power assist for the driver input torque, and active return of
self-aligning torque.
The validity of the proposed method were confirmed by
simulations and experiments.

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Yousuke Yamaguchi received the B.E. and M.E.

degrees from Keio University, Yokohama, Japan, in
2005 and 2007, respectively.
His research interests include intelligent vehicles
and motion control.

Toshiyuki Murakami (M93) received the B.E.,

M.E., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering
from Keio University, Yokohama, Japan, in 1988,
1990, and 1993, respectively.
Since 1993, he has been with Keio University,
where he was first with the Department of Electrical
Engineering and is currently with the Department
of System Design Engineering as a Professor. From
1999 to 2000, he was a Visiting Researcher with
the Institute for Power Electronics and Electrical
Drives, Aachen University of Technology, Aachen,
Germany. His research interests include robotics, intelligent vehicles, mobile
robots, and motion control.