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Actuators:

Actuators

Rotational DC Motors

Linear Stepper Motors Pneumatics Artificia l Muscle s

Geared

RC Servo

Unipolar

Bipolar

DC Motor: The most commonly and widely used actuator is a simple DC motor. Apply a voltage to both terminals, and weeeeeeee it spins. But what if you want to control which direction the motor spins? Correct, you reverse the wires. But you cant directly connect a wheel to the motor unless the robot is small and light weight. This is because a DC motor spins at a very high speed while delivering a very low torque. So to reverse this effect we need something in-between; like a transmission gear box in car. But over here we call it a gear-box. And the resultant arrangement is know as the geared motor. Important Geared Motor Parameters: Coil Resistance The resistance between the motor terminals. Voltage The rated operating voltage of the motor. No load Current Current measured flowing through the motor in the free running (no load) condition. Stall current Current measured flowing through the motor in the stall (full load) condition. Torque The output force of the motor, measured in Kgcm Gear Ratio Its the ratio of the number of teeth on the input gear to the number of teeth on the second gear (one stage reduction)

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RC Servo Motor: The term servo is an automatic device that uses error-sensing feedback to correct the performance of a mechanism. RC servo motors are composed of a DC motor mechanically linked to a potentiometer. Pulse-width modulation (PWM) signals sent to the servo are translated into position commands by electronics inside the servo. When the servo is commanded to rotate, the DC motor is powered until the potentiometer reaches the value corresponding to the commanded position. The servo is controlled by three wires: ground (usually black/orange), power (red) and control (brown/other colour). The servo expects a pulse every 20 ms in order to gain correct information about the angle. The width of the servo pulse dictates the range of the servo's angular motion. Running Servo Motors: To run a servo motor you have to generate PWM signals at fixed time period(20ms). The on period ranges from 1ms to 2ms corresponding to 0 degree to 180 degree. A servo pulse of 1.5 ms width will set the servo to its "neutral" position, or 90 or servo pulse of 1.25 ms could set the servo to 45. Stepper Motor:

Stepper Motors work under a very similar principle to DC motors, except they have many coils instead of just one. So to operate a stepper motor, one must activate these different coils in particular patterns to generate motor rotation. So stepper motors need to be sent patterned commands to rotate. These commands are sent as high and low logic over several lines, and must be pulsed in a particular order and combination. Steppers are often used because each 'step,' separated by a set step angle, can be counted and used for feedback control. For example, a 10 degree step angle stepper motor would require 36 commands to rotate 360 degrees. Drivers:

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Since current and voltage requirements of a motor are higher than what a logic block can provide, we need an amplifying or a driving device in-between them. The driver could be an electromechanical or a solid state device.

Drivers

Electromechanical Relays (SPST,SPDT,DPST,DPDT)

Solid-State BJTs & MOSFETs

H Bridge Designs: How to run a DC motor in both directions?? A H-bridge is an electronic circuit which enables a voltage to be applied across a load in either direction. A "double pole double throw" relay can generally achieve the same electrical functionality as an Hbridge. This is how the H-bridge configuration looks:

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S2 and S3 Closed

S1 and S4 Closed

The first diagram above is a H-Bridge configuration. Let us now see the working in the next figure. When we close the switch S2 and S3 the current flows in the direction as shown in the figure. When we close the switch S1 and S4 the current flows in the opposite direction as shown in the figure. Now if we close the S1 and S3, the Vcc and GND are directly shorted which will burn the circuit. If we close the switch S1 and S2 the motor will stop working. Now how do we implement this logic in a circuit? The switches in electronics are transistors. Now as we must not close switches S1,S3 or S2,S4 together we use complementary pair of transistors so that S1,S3 or S2,S4 doesnt get shorted. The complementary pair of transistors are PNP and NPN transistors. So we will now replace these switches by PNP and NPN transistors.

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Now let us look at the above circuit keeping in mind the working of H-Bridge. Let us start giving different inputs to A and B and see how circuit reacts to these inputs. Case A 0 In this when and B 1 T1 ON T2 OFF T3 OFF T4 ON case T1 T4 1:

areON motor

the

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moves in the clockwise direction. When A is 0 T3 doesnt get ON since NPN transistor gets ON when input is given as 1.Similarily when B is 1 T2 doesnt get ON since PNP transistor gets ON when input is given as 0. Case 2:

A 1

B 0

T1 OFF

T2 ON

T3 ON

T4 OFF

In this case when T2 and T3 is ON the motor moves in the anti-clockwise direction. When B is 0 T3 doesnt get ON since PNP transistor gets ON when input is given as 0.Similarily when A is 1 T1 doesnt get ON since NPN transistor gets ON when input is given as 1.

To protect the transistors we add four Fly back diodes in parallel as shown in figure below.

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The same design is implemented in the motor driver board given to you.

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L293D motor driver board: H-bridge Configured motor driver

The motor driver board is built around the popular L293D H-bridge IC. It is used for driving two DC motors bidirectional or to drive one stepper motor. It is widely used to drive medium voltage & current rated motors. It can source as well as sink current of 600mA. The supply voltage rating is up to 36V. It has a feature of inbuilt flyback diodes.

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