Professor Jürgen Ackermann,
Institute for Robotics and System Dynamics, DLR,
German Aerospace Research Establishment,
Wessling, Germany
The safety of car driving is affected by unexpected yaw torques. Automatic control by measurement of the yaw rate and actuation of a small additional steering angle at the front wheels reacts faster and more precisely than the driver. Significant safety improvments have been shown in tests with an experimental car. The focus of this talk is on the robustness of the steering control system with respect to rapidly changing road-tire contact and with respect to velocity. Also the short-time effect of the driver support system will be discussed, by which the full steering authority is softly transferred back to the driver beginning already 0.5 seconds after a disturbance torque.