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With the rise in demand, advanced steering control and electric vehicle technology are rapidly developing in modern times. Due to a controller's role as a backbone for the modern vehicle, its study has become increasingly crucial. This research proposes a novel 4th axle steering (4AS) feedforward controller that utilizes the first, second and fourth axle steering control for an 8x8 scaled electric combat vehicle. The vehicle is tested using the predefined path following. The novel 4AS controller is then compared to the Ackermann steering condition at different speeds. In the scaled vehicle used for this research, each wheel is independently driven by an in-wheel motor, while the steering is carried out by linear actuators. Individual eight-wheel steering control systems are designed and installed on the scaled vehicle to evaluate the driving performance from low speed to high speed. The 4AS steering method is implemented to improve the stability of the scaled vehicle at high speeds.

This work investigates the steering and wheel speed control of a completely custom built 8x8 scaled electric combat vehicle (SECV) which has been constructed to meet the Ackermann condition at low speeds. During remote control operation the scaled vehicle is capable of continuously maintaining and varying the individual wheel speed and individual wheel steering angles of all eight wheels in real time. Several steering scenarios have been developed including traditional (front 2-axle steering), fixed third axle (first, second and fourth axle steering), all wheel steering and crab steering (all wheels are parallel with same steering angle). The traditional, two axle steering scenario is experimentally tested for accuracy in this work with planned future research for experimental analysis of the other steering configurations. This work is conducted using Arduino software to control the physical SECV and TruckSim software to simulate the dynamics of the vehicle.