A steer-by-wire steering system for a vehicle, including: an operating member operable by a driver; a steering device including an electric motor and configured to steer a wheel by a force generated by the electric motor; a controller configured to control the steering device, wherein the controller enables the wheel to be steered in accordance with an operation of the operating member while imposing limitation on a supply current to the electric motor, and wherein the limitation imposed on the supply current is made smaller when a running speed of the vehicle is lower than a set speed and a steering motion of the wheel is a motion in a direction to decrease a steering amount than i) when the running speed of the vehicle is not lower than the set speed and ii) when the steering motion of the wheel is a motion in a direction to increase the steering amount.

A main power supply having a large capacity and a backup power supply having a small capacity are switchable by a power supply switching determination unit in a system. A motor control device drives a motor by the main power supply or the backup power supply. A drive control unit outputs a drive signal, calculated by feedback control of the current detection value with respect to the current command value, to an inverter circuit. When the power supply switching determination unit switches from the main power supply to the backup power supply, the drive control unit moves from a normal control using the main power supply to a backup control that restricts an electric power consumption and prevents the backup power supply from stopping.

Using an update amount, an update amount calculating circuit manipulates a phase-control angle so as to perform feedback control such that a steering torque corresponds to a target torque. The steering torque is obtained by reducing a steering torque in magnitude by a predetermined value. The phase-control angle is used to convert a current command value to a value of a fixed coordinate system, for example. Using a guard value, a guard processing circuit performs a guard process on a current command value set by a command value setting circuit, so that the current command value becomes the current command value. The guard value is used to determine an appropriate range for a variation in the current command value in accordance with an amount by which the steering torque exceeds in magnitude the target torque.

Disclosed are an apparatus and method for controlling a motor. An exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure provides an apparatus for controlling an operation of a motor, the apparatus including: a first motor control unit connected to a first winding part of the motor and configured to control the operation of the motor; and a second motor control unit connected to a second winding part of the motor and configured to control the operation of the motor, in which the first motor control unit turns on or off current paths formed between the first motor control unit and the motor by controlling switches included in the first motor control unit, and the second motor control unit turns on or off current paths formed between the second motor control unit and the motor by controlling switches included in the second motor control unit.

When starting automatic pulling-in control, an electronic control unit calculates a temperature increase amount ΔTi of a motor caused by the execution of the automatic pulling-in control and a temperature increase amount ΔTo of the motor caused by the execution of automatic pulling-out control. Based on the current temperature of the motor, the temperature increase amount ΔTi, and the temperature increase amount ΔTo, the electronic control unit obtains a predicted temperature of the motor of a case in which the automatic pulling-out control is executed subsequent to the automatic pulling-in control. When the predicted temperature is lower than an allowable upper limit, starting of the automatic pulling-in control is permitted. When the predicted temperature is higher than or equal to the allowable upper limit, starting of the automatic pulling-in control is prohibited.

[Problem]

An object of the present invention is to provide a motor control unit that the heat generation of FETs is not concentrated in one FET and the heat generation is distributed to the plural FETs by operating the duties of all three-phases in a case that the driving of the motor is stopped.

[Means for Solving the Problem]

The present invention is the motor control unit comprising a current detector; an upper-stage maximum heat generation-phase specifying means to calculate respective heat generation amounts of upper-stage FETs and specify an upper-stage maximum heat generation phase; a lower-stage maximum heat generation-phase specifying means to calculate respective heat generation amounts of lower-stage FETs and specify a lower-stage maximum heat generation phase; an upper-stage selecting means to select an upper-stage selecting duty and an upper-stage selecting phase current based on the upper-stage maximum heat generation phase; a lower-stage selecting means to select a lower-stage selecting duty and a lower-stage selecting phase current based on the lower-stage maximum heat generation phase; a duty operating amount calculating section to calculate a duty operating amount; and a duty operating section to operate the respective phase duties based on the duty operating amount.

The vehicle control system is applied as a system of a vehicle mounted with an EPS device having an electric motor driven to control the steering angle. The vehicle control system includes a controller configured to perform steering control for controlling an energization of the electric motor to control the steering angle of the wheels. When the wheels are held after being steered by a specific steering in the steering control, the controller performs a steering return process in which the wheels are turned back and held in a direction opposite to a steering direction of the specific steering. And during a stationary steering-holding in which the steering angle is held and the vehicle is stopped, the controller performs an energization suppression process for reducing energization to the electric motor to be smaller than the energization before the stationary steering-holding.

Systems and methods for detecting magnetic turn counter errors with redundancy are provided. In one aspect, a magnetic field turn sensor system includes a magnetic field angle sensor having a sine bridge and a cosine bridge and first to third comparators configured to compare the outputs from the sine and cosine bridges. The system further includes a processor configured to receive outputs from each of the first to third comparators, determine that a combination of the outputs from the first to third comparators corresponds to an invalid state, and indicate a fault in response to determining that the combination of the outputs from the first to third comparators corresponds to the invalid state.

Aspects of the disclosure relate to a vehicle having an autonomous driving mode and a manual driving mode. The vehicle may include a steering system having one or more processors configured to control the orientation of the one or more wheels based on control commands. The vehicle may also include an autonomous driving control system configured to control the vehicle in an autonomous driving mode by generating the control commands and to send the control commands to the steering system. In addition, the steering system may thermally derate the steering system based on first temperature information for the steering system when the vehicle is operating in a manual drive mode, and the autonomous driving control system may thermally derate the steering system based on second temperature information for the steering system when the vehicle is operating in the autonomous driving mode.

Vehicle state information is input, and a control amount, which is control state information, is calculated from the vehicle state information to control a controlled device. A control state is monitored by a monitor unit, and an abnormality is detected based on a state where the vehicle state information or the control state information exists in an abnormality region in which the vehicle state information or the control state information has not reached a failure region corresponding to a failure. The vehicle state information, the control state information, and monitor information are stored in a buffer for a period set in advance while always updating the latest vehicle state information, control state information, and monitor information. When the abnormality is detected, the above respective information before and after the abnormality detection including the information stored in the buffer are stored in a nonvolatile storage unit.