Fault-tolerant actuator system for electrical steering of vehicles

Being critical to the safety of vehicles, the steering system is required to maintain the vehicles ability to steer until it is brought to halt, should a fault occur. With electrical steering becoming a cost-effective candidate for electrical powered vehicles, a fault-tolerant architecture is needed that meets this requirement. This paper studies the fault-tolerance properties of an electrical steering system. It presents a fault-tolerant architecture where a dedicated AC motor design used in conjunction with cheap voltage measurements can ensure detection of all relevant faults in the steering system. The paper shows how active control reconfiguration can accommodate all critical faults. The fault-tolerant abilities of the steering system are demonstrated on the hardware of a warehouse truck.