Design issues for haptic steering force feedback on an automotive simulator

This paper describes the deployment of a torque controlled force feedback steering device for human in the loop automotive simulations. The high bandwidth of the velocity controlled three phase brushless servomotor allows for a realistic representation of the virtual dynamics. The electromagnetic interference produced by the industrial servomotor and the controller made the elaboration stage challenging. To overcome the former issues careful amplification and filtering was ineluctable. The final dynamical model of the steering system used and the corresponding motor controller constitute an efficient haptic device for providing intuitive kinesthetic feedback. The system can feed back torques up to 20 NM with accuracy of 0.02 NM.