Four-wheel Independent Steering Control System Based on Broadcast Control

The corner module, which integrates an in-wheel motor and a steering motor, is attracting attention as a means of building a powertrain for electric vehicles. The corner module enables independent control of the braking/driving and steering forces of each wheel, which provides a high degree of freedom and redundancy, and is expected to dramatically improve vehicle dynamics and fault-tolerance performance through all-wheel drive and all-wheel steering. On the other hand, even if redundancy is established mechanically, it is meaningless as a redundant system unless the redundancy is well used. In other words, there is an urgent need to establish a control method that allows corner modules to operate appropriately according to driving conditions. In this study, we apply broadcast control, one of the multi-agent control theories, to construct a four-wheel independent steering control system. Through numerical simulations, we confirm that the proposed method brings out the effect of the redundant system and improves the vehicle performance.