Turning apparatus
AssigneeJtekt Corporation
InventorsToshiaki OGATA, Fumio KISHIDA, Yoshio KONDO, Keishi NAKAMURA
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A turning apparatus includes tie rods, a wheel turning shaft, two motors, two ball screws, a transmission mechanism, and two controllers. The wheel turning shaft turns steered wheels of a vehicle. A first controller that is any one of the two controllers computes a current command value and allocates the current command value to the motors at a ratio that varies with a position of the wheel turning shaft in an axial direction. The two controllers each supply any one of the motors, which is an object to be controlled by a corresponding one of the controllers, with a current according to a corresponding of individual current command values.
Claims5
A turning apparatus comprising:
- tie rods respectively coupled to steered wheels of a vehicle;
- a wheel turning shaft at both ends of which the tie rods are respectively swingably coupled at angles, the wheel turning shaft being configured to linearly move in an axial direction to turn the steered wheels of the vehicle via the tie rods;
- two motors configured to generate a torque that is a source of a driving force to be applied to the wheel turning shaft;
- two ball screws each configured to individually convert rotating motion of a corresponding one of the two motors to linear motion of the wheel turning shaft, the two ball screws respectively having external thread grooves disposed at different positions in the axial direction on an outer periphery of the wheel turning shaft;
- a transmission mechanism configured to transmit a torque of each of the motors to a corresponding one of the ball screws;
- and
- two controllers each configured to individually control a corresponding one of the two motors, wherein:
- a first controller that is any one of the two controllers is configured to compute a current command value according to a total value of torque to be generated by the two motors and configured to allocate the computed current command value to the motors at a ratio that varies with a position of the wheel turning shaft in the axial direction;
- and
- the two controllers each are configured to supply any one of the motors, which is an object to be controlled by a corresponding one of the controllers, with a current according to an individual current command value allocated to the any one of the motors, which is the object to be controlled.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.