Patent ID: 7706943
Filing Date: 2010-04-27
Classification: B62D

Abstract:
1. A method for calculating a turning radius during an steering operation of a vehicle, the method comprising: formulating relational expressions having variables based on a steering angle and turning angles of outer and inner tires of the vehicle and including known vehicle parameters and unknown steering parameters of the vehicle; applying data to the known vehicle parameters based on design data of the vehicle; applying values to the variables corresponding to a zero-steering state and a full-steering state of said vehicle to obtain conditional expressions, and calculating values corresponding to the unknown steering parameters based on said conditional expressions; calculating turning angles of the outer and inner tires corresponding to a plurality of steering angles obtained by dividing a range between the zero-steering state and the full-steering state, respectively, by using the relational expressions to which the calculated values of the unknown steering parameters are applied; calculating turning radii corresponding to the steering angles from the calculated turning angles of the outer and inner tires; and calculating a function of an estimated turning radius for a predetermined steering angle based on the plurality of steering angles and the turning radii corresponding to the plurality of steering angles; wherein a steering assistance apparatus outputs a signal containing a predicted steering path for said vehicle based on the calculated function.