Design of a portable steering wheel angle measurement system

The aim of this Master Thesis is to develop a steering wheel measuring system. The system should be easy to use and install, portable and have the possibility to be used in different vehicle types from different manufactures. The old system in use is stationary equipment that is difficult to apply on a new vehicle without any major installation. In this work a prototype is developed using rate sensor technology. The system is based on two different angular rate sensors. One sensor is mounted on the steering wheel to record the motions the driver affects on the steering wheel. The second sensor is mounted fixed in the vehicle to record the movement of the vehicle. The signals are conditioned and combined before conversion into the steering wheel angle. The system is compatible with Race Technology DL2 data logger. The work presented shows that the design of the prototype works satisfactory, although with some limitations. Further development has to be done to make the system able to measure higher steering wheel angular velocities. Additional sensors can also be embedded in the system to minimize the signal conditioning after the measurements