Verification of hardware-in-the-loop test bench for evaluating steering wheel angle sensor performance for steer-by-wire system

In recent years, the Steer-by-Wire (SBW) technology has been gaining popularity and replacing classical steering systems. It plays the most crucial role in autonomous cars where the vehicle must perform maneuvers on its own without driver’s intervention. One of the key components of this system is the steering wheel angle sensor (SAS). Its reliability and performance may affect driver’s life and health. The purpose of this paper is to show a test system to comprehensively evaluate the performance of the steering wheel angle sensor in the SBW system during real-world maneuvers and show how SAS parameters such as accuracy of angle, angular speed etc. affect car trajectory resulting in hit cones. For this purpose, a test system was built, with the use of virtual test drives based on CarMaker software, CANoe and VTSystem hardware. In order to evaluate its performance, the errors introduced by the system were determined. Additionally, using the realised test system, three commercial steering wheel angle sensors were tested and compared during a virtual test drive. Their errors were determined, as well as their performance in the SBW technology and the consistency of the obtained results with the parameters declared by the manufacturer were verified as well.