Thesis work - Steer-by-wire, Trailer backup assist

About this opportunity - Background

Innovation starts with being curious. At Volvo Cars, we believe that being curious and truly committed to understanding people is the key to future success. We are looking for driven and motivated students interested in pursuing their master thesis within Vehicle Engineering during the spring term 2026.

At Vehicle Engineering, our responsibility spans the entire chassis, interior, climate, body & exterior functions, mechanical Integration and a range of vehicle attributes with impact on design and customer experience of our complete product. Across these domains and all development cycles we will lead an effective delivery operation on complete level in close sync with other Engineering units, functions and stakeholders across the company.

This thesis work is within the area of Steering in-house SW at Deceleration and Steering.  

Background & Motivation

With steer-by-wire systems, the mechanical connection between the steering wheel and the road wheels is replaced by an electrical connection. One of the benefits of replacing the mechanical connection is that it is possible to increase driving automation while maintaining (different levels of) human control over the overall driving task

Objective
The objectives of a trailer backup assist function are to assist drivers in safely and effectively maneuvering a vehicle while towing a trailer. This by use a combination of the steer-by-wire steering wheel actuator, sensors, and software to make the process of backing up with a trailer easier for drivers. 

Some of the challenges to be solved are:
1.    How to determine the car-trailer articulation angle
2.    How to design the human interaction (torque and visual) to achieve intuitive control feedback?
3.    How to prevent exceeding the critical hitch angle (beyond which it is not possible to reduce the hitch angle when reversing.

Scope of the thesis work

1.    Determine the car-trailer articulation angle. This could include computer vision software.
2.    Design and implement a way to use the steering wheel input and torque feedback to interact with the backup assist function.
3.    Design and implement a visual interface that includes camera information and visual information to aid the trailer backup. The visual overlay could include information like, actual and target articulation angle, sectors of articulation angles beyond which jackknifing could occur, overview of the swept path of the car-trailer, etc.
4.    Design and conduct experiments that can be used to evaluate the above
5.    Subjectively and objectively evaluate the implemented trailer backup assist function.

What you'll bring

We are looking for you who are self-paced, have a driving license (at least one of you), have experience from working practically with mechatronic systems (mechanics, electronics, software). Your education background is most likely within automotive engineering with software and electronics specialization or systems & mechatronics engineering. The work will mainly be done on-site in our Torslanda engineering premises.

Duration

•    Tentative proposed thesis work period: 19th January 2026 to 26th of June 2026 (dates can be flexible with +/- 7 days)
•    The duration for this thesis work is 20 weeks.
•    30 ECTS (Master academic credits) in agreement with your Thesis Advisor in University
•    This thesis is to be conducted by 1 Student or 2 Students working in pair (preferred).