Optimizing a Steering System for a KTH Formula Student Race car

Sammanfattning: The primary objective of this study is to develop and evaluate a steering controller for aFormula Student driverless electric vehicle to enhance its performance and efficiency. By creatinga testing setup and testing scripts, the controller's sensitivity to various CAN bus parameters, suchas periodicity and message priority, could be assessed. For the tests, a PI-controller wasimplemented. The results demonstrated that the controller met all requirements except beingable to achieve more than 180 degrees of cumulative change in steering angle in one second. Theimportance of maintaining a sufficiently short message periodicity was also highlighted.Furthermore, an unexpected behaviour was encountered when testing the importance of CANmessage priority. Nonetheless, additional adjustments to the PI-controller's gain values arerequired to guarantee compliance with all specified criteria. Future research should focus onevaluating the controller in an actual vehicle, exploring advanced controllers such as MPC, andadopting data-driven approaches. This study lays the groundwork for the further development ofa robust and efficient controller for the driverless electric race car being developed by KTHFormula Student.