Personal Watercrafts (PWC) are vehicles propelled by a water jet and steered by changing the direction of the water jet.Because of the decreasing of the thrust when the throttle is fully closed during running, the steering force also decreases. This phenomenon is different from that of land vehicles. To minimize this, the Off-Throttle-Steer (OTS) System has been developed Basically, the system controls engine speeds using the signal of full steering, and also uses a throttle opening, a running speed of PWC predicted by engine speed, and a timer for determining the control timing as other control signals. Thus, a natural steering characteristic was obtained by balancing a turning characteristic at high speed and controllability at low speed.
Article of Honda R&D Technical Review Vol.14 No.1 (125 - 130)