Investigating Characteristics and Opportunities for Rear-Wheel Steering

The potential of additional steering possibilities (like rear-wheel or all-wheel steering) is analyzed for critical situations to investigate possible safety improvements. For this purpose, a dynamic optimization problem is formulated to find the best possible maneuver. The optimization criterion is to maximize the entry speed into a constant radius \(90^\circ \) -curve. The optimization problem is solved for different steering topologies, and the results quantify the increase in maximum entry speed, highlighting the potential for safety improvements. Further, the optimal steering strategies are determined, and they show interesting characteristics like initial diagonal driving or, in other cases, a transition from initial out-of-phase steering to in-phase steering.