The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Jun. 15, 1999
Filed:
Dec. 30, 1997
Honda Giken Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha, Tokyo, JP;
Abstract
An electric power steering apparatus includes a judgment unit which passes a judgment that a condition, in which an offset signal indicative of the offset between a target current signal and a motor current signal, or a drive control signal used for controlling an electric motor is greater than a threshold, has continued for an allowable time. Based on this judgment, a forced drive control unit forcibly drives the electric motor. A fault judgment unit monitors the motor current in all times and judges a current detecting unit to be at fault if the motor current does not vary even though the electric motor is drive forcibly. Thus, even when a failure in the current detecting unit occurs during movement of a motor vehicle, such failure can reliably be detected. Additionally, since the judgment is performed after the electric motor is driven forcibly, misjudgment does not occur even when the judgement at the judgment unit results from continuous application of abrupt manual steering operation.