Steer-By-Wire Control Strategies in Autonomous Vehicles
Summary
Steer‐by‐wire systems decouple the driver’s steering input from the road wheels by replacing mechanical linkages with electronic actuators and sensors. In the context of autonomous vehicles, this architecture enables seamless integration of high-level trajectory planners and low-level steering controllers, offering fine-grained control of lateral dynamics, real-time fault diagnosis and reconfiguration, and the generation of customised haptic feedback. Robustness against uncertainties in tyre–road interaction, actuator dynamics and sensor faults is achieved through advanced control paradigms such as sliding mode control, model predictive control, active disturbance rejection and adaptive observer-based schemes. These strategies can be tailored for multi-motor or four-wheel independent steer-by-wire layouts, ensuring precise trajectory tracking, minimised control chattering and guaranteed convergence in finite time. The global significance of steer-by-wire technology spans enhanced safety in urban environments, improved manoeuvrability at low speeds and reduced mechanical complexity for future electric and autonomous vehicle platforms.
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Steer-By-Wire Control Strategies in Autonomous Vehicles publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in steer-by-wire control strategies in autonomous vehicles across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Steer-by-wire (SbW): A steering architecture that replaces mechanical steering linkages with electronic signal transmission and actuation.
Sliding mode control (SMC): A robust control method that drives the system state to a predefined sliding surface and maintains it despite disturbances.
Barrier function: A smooth mathematical tool integrated into control laws to enforce state constraints and reduce chattering.
Model reduction: The process of deriving a lower-order mathematical representation that preserves essential dynamics of a detailed system.
Adaptive observer: A real-time estimation scheme that concurrently identifies system states and uncertain parameters for feedback control.
References
- Sliding mode‐based active disturbance rejection control for vehicle steer‐by‐wire systems. IET Cyber-Physical Systems Theory & Applications (2017).
- Adaptive Second Order Recursive Terminal Sliding Mode Control for a Four-Wheel Independent Steer-by-Wire System. IEEE Access (2020).
- Design of a Robust Controller Based on Barrier Function for Vehicle Steer-by-Wire Systems. World Electric Vehicle Journal (2024).
- Adaptive Sliding Mode Control of Rack Position Tracking System for Steer-by-Wire Vehicles. IEEE Access (2020).
- An approach to develop haptic feedback control reference for steering systems using open-loop driving manoeuvres. Vehicle System Dynamics (2019).
- Development and Analysis of a Detail Model for Steer-by-Wire Systems. IEEE Access (2023).
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