Electronic differential design for a vehicle with four independently controlled in-wheel motors

In this paper a simple topology for electronic differential in an electric vehicle with four independent In-wheel motors is proposed. Based on inputs of the steering wheel angle and the acceleration pedal position, this method uses real-time power management and produces different torque references for the four wheels and, consequently the angular velocity of each wheel will be adjusted. Using slip-ratio calculations the proposed algorithm extracts maximum output torque by optimizing the operating-point slip ratio. The paper also highlights an application of deployed in-wheel motors in yaw stability and suggests a simple yaw control strategy. The proposed electronic differential method is first investigated using MATLAB and is then implemented on a real-time digital simulator, which is then connected to a small motor to verify its performance in a hardware-in-loop scheme.