Electric power steering apparatus

An electric power steering apparatus for performing steering assist by transmitting a driving force produced by an electric motor to a steering mechanism, comprising:

• an operation amount detecting unit arranged to detect an operation amount of an operation member for steering a motor vehicle;
• a reference assist characteristics setting unit arranged to set reference assist characteristics which are reference characteristics of a motor driving target value corresponding to the operation amount detected by the operation amount detecting unit;
• a motor driving target value setting unit arranged to set a motor driving target value corresponding to the operation amount detected by the operation amount detecting unit in accordance with corrected assist characteristics obtained by shifting the reference assist characteristics set by the reference assist characteristics setting unit along an axis of coordinates of the operation amount;
• a yaw rate detecting unit arranged to detect or estimate a yaw rate of the motor vehicle;
• and
• a shifting amount setting unit arranged to set a shifting amount of the corrected assist characteristics with respect to the reference assist characteristics corresponding to the yaw rate detected or estimated by the yaw rate detecting unit.