Electric steering apparatus for watercraft
AssigneeYamaha Marine Kabushiki Kaisha
InventorMakoto Mizutani
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
An electric steering apparatus can include a rudder device driven by an electric motor, a steering wheel for operation by an operator to control the angle of the rudder device, a reaction torque motor for applying a reaction force to the steering wheel, a load sensor for detecting an external force acting on a boat or the rudder during steering, and a reaction torque calculator circuit for calculating a target torque for the reaction motor according to an input of the load sensor.
Claims8
A steering apparatus for a boat comprising a rudder device driven by an electric actuator arranged to change a running direction of the boat, a steering wheel configured to operable by an operator of the boat, the steering wheel being electrically connected to the electric actuator so as to feed a drive signal to the electric actuator according to an amount of operation, a load sensor configured to detect an external force that acts on the boat during running, a reaction torque motor configured to apply a reaction force to the steering wheel, and a reaction torque calculation module configured to calculate a target torque for the reaction torque motor by subtracting a force due to paddle-rudder effect from an output of the load sensor.
A steering apparatus for a boat comprising a rudder device driven by an electric actuator arranged to change a running direction of the boat, a steering wheel configured to operable by an operator of the boat, the steering wheel being electrically connected to the electric actuator so as to feed a drive signal to the electric actuator according to an amount of operation, a load sensor configured to detect an external force that acts on the boat during running, a reaction torque motor configured to apply a reaction force to the steering wheel, and means for calculating a target torque for the reaction torque motor by subtracting a force due to paddle-rudder effect from an output of the load sensor.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.