Steering Mode

In Steering mode the user’s steering stick controls the vehicle’s lateral acceleration and the throttle stick controls the vehicle’s speed. At a given steering stick percentage, the vehicle will be controlled to try produce a turn with a lateral acceleration of that percentage of the g-force produced by turning in a TURN_RADIUS turn at the current target speed, not to exceed ATC_TURN_MAX_G G’s. So for full stick steering inputs, at lower speeds, the turn radius will be TURN_RADIUS, gradually increasing with speed such that ATC_TURN_MAX_G is not exceeded. Once the input returns to neutral, the vehicle will attempt to hold heading, compensating for external influences, ie. “heading hold”. For ground based vehicles, this attempts to prevent roll-overs or skids.

  • the TURN_RADIUS parameter controls the maximum aggressiveness of the turns. A smaller number results in more aggressive turns.This is the tightest radius that ground vehicles can do, usually at low speed.

  • the ATC_TURN_MAX_G parameter sets the maximum limit on lateral G’s while steering to prevent roll-overs or skids on ground vehicles.

  • when not moving, skid-steering vehicles will pivot in response to steering input but regular steering-throttle rovers will show almost no steering response.

  • the top speed is interpolated from the CRUISE_THROTTLE and CRUISE_SPEED parameters. These parameters are described on the Tuning Speed and Throttle page.

  • Object Avoidance is active in this mode (if configured).

  • in earlier versions of (before Rover 3.4.1)the SPEED_TURN_GAIN (Rover 3.1 and older) or WP_OVERSHOOT parameter will slow the vehicle as it does in Auto. This is described briefly on the Tuning Navigation page. Current stable versions use neither parameter in the Steering Mode.

  • this mode can be used to tune the steering rate and speed controllers ahead of attempting to tune navigation controls, but using Acro Mode is preferred to prevent Steering Mode limiting any turn rates.