Research on the hazards of SAS failures and fault injection techniques in the FTC system of unmanned SBW vehicles

The commercial deployment of unmanned vehicles remains impeded by safety concerns, with failures in the steering angle sensor (SAS) of the steer-by-wire (SBW) system posing significant risks to operational safety. This paper addresses the gaps in the existing literature regarding the analysis of the hazards associated with SAS failures and the deficiency in research on fault injection strategies during experimental validation. By conducting a thorough examination of the typical faults and their consequences in SAS, we have developed a software-based fault injection strategy for the purposes of testing the efficacy of fault-tolerant control (FTC) systems. Experimental results from a real vehicle platform confirm the validity of the proposed fault injection strategy and the robustness of the FTC system.