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Conventional EPS (Electric Power Steering) systems are operated by one type of steering tuning map set by steering test drivers before being released to customers. That is, the steering efforts can't change in many different driving conditions such as road conditions (low mu, high mu and unpaved roads) or some specific driving conditions (sudden stopping, entering into EPS failure modes and full accelerating). Those conditions can't give drivers consistent steering efforts. This paper approached the new concept technology detecting those conditions by using vehicle and EPS sensors such as tire wheel speeds, vehicle speed, steering angle, steering torque, steering speed and so on. After detecting those conditions and judging what the best steering efforts for safe vehicle driving are, EPS systems automatically can be changed with the steering friction level and selection of steering optimized mapping on several conditions.

In general, the ride and handling characteristics of a vehicle are strongly dependent on chassis parameters that come from the kinematic and compliance properties of a suspension system. For ride comfort improvement of a compact SUV with increasing handling performance simultaneously, this research proposes a new quantitative approach by considering various driving maneuvers and road surfaces. Particularly, five different road surfaces were used for ride comfort analysis, and this analysis was performed for two different vehicle speeds on a cleat road profile and three different vehicle speeds on a rough road profile. The contribution analysis of a suspension and a seat structure to ride comfort was investigated in order to decide an optimal structural combination. It was shown that contribution of each factor is different according to road profiles and driving conditions respectively.