I dispute the statement that OEMS know little about steering feel and road feel. I happen to know several "companies" (1 OEM) that have enough technology to synthesis road feel to a level beyond even the BMW class IF they wanted to (or were allowed to pursue it. By that, I mean if they could get funding for the parts, an audience for the market, and a profit from the investment.
There are several almost insurmountable obstacles to getting this done. BTW: Hurrah for the use of the term Haptics, because this science is the key to a feeling objective in vehicle control (and not just road vehicles).
First, it is determined that only a fraction of vehicle evaluators are skilled enough to sense a road feel candidate. This is not an issue of training, but a skill brought to the table by a person who developed the skill at an early age (usually before 12 years old). Like certain eye reaction skills, you have it or you don't. This layer is a problem in vehicle development if the managing director does not have it (or worse the marketting and financial side of the business doesn't as a group, too).
Secondly, A vehicle in the hands of a proper evaluator must have steering and body controls "Que"d for an exemplary bandwidth. This is often misconstrued by controls people because its absolute bandwidth, not relative bandwidth. This means that the DC coherence and gain (via cross correlation of 4 signals), must be just as adequate as the 12 Hz bound. Too often, friction and damping become sacrificed for cost and quality reasons: Either the vehicle is good at low mileage and deteriorates at high mileage, or the other way around.
Thirdly, The presence of "prime" roadway signal (certain traits of transient aligning moment) can not be understated. A "good" set of tires is not enough with perfect body and steering control components. There are very important traits of a "Great" road feel tire. These factors are multiplicative: Any one sacrificed trait lowers the performance. One can not be used to augment another. The use of steady state properties to produce a candidate development tire can send you down a less than optimal path (so to speak) for road feel.
Forthly, A road feel evaluator can be tested on laboratory machinery to ascertain their evaluation skill ability. Its a visual as well as a haptic (feeling) response. Thus, machinery to produce various levels of multiply correlated movement and touch sensations is already in existence. (One in particular is in Canada: its a desireability for flying, too, you know).
Fifth (I'll take a pint, thankyou), it should be expected that a high powered, high frequency steer controller can do better than manual steering because the compromises made to maneuver at all speeds are too degrading of good or great road feel vehicle systems. You need some wattage for this.
Sixth(ly?) It is too often found that race car teams with multiple drivers can not use identical chassis and tire setups because the drivers do not bring the same feeling skill levels to the track. This becomes maddenly obvious when using one car amongst several drivers during testing sessions.
Lastly, a good experiment to run requires a roadway paved with a graduated level of lateral coarsness and a driver whose vision is restricted to eliminate path visualization.
This recognizes the ability of most good track racers to read the roadway as it evolves during a race. The chassis and tires read it, the driver reacts to it.
Oops, one more: The current problem with roadway simulators for roadfeel simulation and study, is the unacceptable screen delay of the visual field generator. Sure, an average "displacement" control driver will says it seems real. A "feel" driver will tell you its not even close. Many simulators showing F1 skits are driven by novices who wouldn't recognize the difference between an F1 and a Buick anyways. They just take the creator's word for it that its a Ferrari. Some of us also know that the Buick is wrong, too.
That's my spewage for the week...
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