Motor Selection for the Control Board

• Case study: MIT Handy Board

– HB’s Internal battery is 9.6V, and it can run motors rated for 6~12V.
However, some 6V motors aren't happy with the extra voltage, and some
12V motors will run too slowly.
Motor Control – Cannot use 3V to 4.5V motors found in many toy cars. These inexpensive
motors are extremely noisy, also, they typically draw several amperes of
current, thereby overloading the Handy Board's motor drive chip (L293D)
and causing the board to reset
Presented by : Dinuka Abeywardena
dinuka@ent.mrt.ac.lk
Department of Electronic and Telecommunications • Testing a motor for compatibility with the control board
– Connect ohmmeter to the motor terminals, and gently rotate the motor shaft
by hand until you obtain the smallest possible winding resistance Rmin., and
calculate current I=9V/Rmin , If I<1A motor is drivable by HB
Dr. Rohan Munasinghe
BSc, MSc, PhD, MIEEE • Improving current handling capability of HB
Department of Electronic and Telecommunication Engineering
Faculty of Engineering – use SN754410 quadruple half H driver, which is a plug-and-play
University of Moratuwa 10400 replacement for the L293D, or stack two L293Ds by soldering
corresponding pins.

DC Motors DC Motors cntd

Small, cheap, reasonably efficient, easy to • Power
use ⇒ ideal for small robotic applications – Product of the output shaft’s rotational velocity and torque

• Efficiency – Output power is zero when

– Mechanical friction, cause some electrical energy to be wasted as heat
– Toy motors 50%, Industrial-grade motors: 90%
• Operating Voltage
– Is the recommended voltage you should use to power the motor
– Most motors will run fine at lower voltages, though they will be less powerful
– Can operate at higher voltages at expense of operating life
Torque is zero: Motor is spinning freely with no load on the shaft. Rotational
velocity is at its highest, but the torque is zero, and it’s not driving any
mechanism (Actually, the motor is doing some work to overcome internal
friction, but that is of no value as output power)
Rotational velocity is zero: Motor is stalled, it is producing its maximal
torque. But as there is no motion, no work is delivered onto the load
– In between two extremes, output power shows a parabolic relationship

• Operating Current
– When there is no resistance to its motion, the motor draws the least amount
of current, and when there is so much resistance to cause the motor to stall,
it draws the maximum current
• Stall current: maximum current a motor can draw at its specified voltage
• Stall torque: torque at stall current
 DC Motor Speed Control
• A DC motor has a two wire connection
• DC motor speed (power) is controlled using a technique
named pulse width modulation, or simply PWM.
– If the DC motor is switched on-off fast, the motor will run
slower than the full-time power on.
– Power OFF: motor slows down a little. ON
– Power ON : motor speeds up a little. OFF
– This makes the motor run weaker, while still having
constant supply voltage. If the power is on only 1/2 of the
time, the motor runs with 1/2 the power of its full-time on.
– Need fast switching to reduce speed fluctuations
speed
fluctuation
DC Motor Direction Control cntd..
3wire control
• Enable and Direction Logic
• Transistors in either vertical leg of “H” are never turned on
at same time
– Use logic to switch transistors
– Four AND gates, Two inverters, connected as illustrated will allow
three logic inputs to control the direction of rotation
– Inverters ensure that only one transistor in each vertical leg of the
H is enabled at any one time
DC Motor Direction Control
H-Bridge Motor Driver Circuit 4wire control
• Four transistors form the vertical legs of the H,
while the motor forms the crossbar
• In order to operate the motor, a diagonally
opposite pair of transistors must be enabled
(saturated), while the other two diagonal pair is
disabled (cut-off)
• Transistors Q1 and Q4 turned ON Q1 and Q4 enabled
– Starting with the positive power terminal,
current flows down through Q1, through the
motor from left to right, through Q4, and down
to the negative power terminal
– Results clockwise rotation of the motor
• Transistors Q2 and Q3 turned ON
– Results in current flowing through the motor
from right to left
– Results anti-clockwise rotation of the motor Q2 and Q3 enabled
Spike Cancellation
• Diodes connecting from each driver output One-Half of
L293D/SN754410
to either Vs , or ground perform the Motor Driver Chip
important function of trapping and shunting
away inductive voltage spikes that naturally
occur as part of any motor’s operation.
• When a motor is running, the armature
acts as an inductor, and when the current
in the armature changes, voltage spikes
are generated that might be of higher
voltage than the Vs power supply or lower
voltage than ground.
Example: suppose all drive transistors are “OFF” suddenly, and as a result a
voltage greater than Vs is generated at the motor on the OUT–1 line. Then the
diode labeled D1 conducts, shunting this voltage to the Vs power supply. If the
diodes were not present, these inductive voltage spikes would enter the voltage
supply possibly doing damage to more sensitive components.
Spike Cancellation contd Active Braking
• What happens if both direction bits are the same state, and
the enable bit is turned on? Effectively, both terminals of
motor are connected together
• Motor acts as a generator, creating electricity out of kinetic
energy already stored in the load connected to the shaft
• If none of the transistors is ON, then the motor is allowed to
spin freely (Coasting) till it stops eventually

Servo Motors Servo Motors

• The servo motor is actually an assembly
of four things:
– a normal DC motor
– a gear reduction unit
– a position sensing device
– a feedback control circuit
 Servo Motors cntd..
• Control Signal is pulse width modulated (PWM), here the positive-going
• Three wires of a servo: power, ground, control.
– The power source must be constantly applied
• Servo shaft typically does not rotate 3600 like a DC motor, but can only
turn 2000 degrees or so back and forth.
• servo has its own power electronics, so very little power flows over the
control signal.
Servo Motor Control
pulse duration tells the desired position of the servo shaft
– 1.520 ms pulse width commands the center position of Futaba S148
servo. A longer pulse commands a clockwise position from the center
position, and a shorter pulse commands a counter-clockwise position
from the center position.
– The servo control pulse modulated frequency is 50Hz (20 ms period),
which means that you can command the servo in every 20ms “go here”

• Servo motors require a 5~6 V DC power supply. This can be taken from Position
the control board power if the servo's aren't doing too much work. commands
Otherwise, a separate power supply is recommended

• If available DC Voltage is higher, 1N4001 diodes can be used to drop

the voltage down to around 6V.

Servo Motor Control cntd.. Servo Motors on MIT Handy Board

• Servo PWM method is different from the speed control PWM
– Speed control PWM: overall duty cycle (% on-time) determines the
power/speed of the motor
– Servo PWM: length of the pulse is the desired position of the shaft
• 920ms (full counterclockwise), 1520ms (center), 2120ms (full clockwise)

control
servo 2
servo 1 5V
6V
control

9.6V
 Winch Servo Stepper Motors
• Winch servo rotates continuously
– Can be used for robot’s main drive motors

• Conversion
– Potentiometer is replaced by a pair of fixed resistors, which fixes the
feedback signal to center position irrespective of the shaft motion.

– Therefore, motor spins continuously for any given position command.

– This methods allows both speed and direction control. the farther the
control signal is away from the center position, the faster the motor
turns

Stepper Motors Stepper Motor Control

• Sequence 1: Energizes just one coil at a
Coil identification
time (4step/cycle). As the current is
• Unipolar motors (easy to drive type) have four coils and are likely to switched from coil to coil, the motor moves
have 5 or 6 wires attached. by one step (say 1.80). Reverse the
• Use an ohmmeter to identify the connections sequence to reverse the direction of rotation
– A-E1, B-E1,C-E2,D-E2
R
– A-B, C-D
2R
• Sequence 2: Energizes two coils at a time.
– A-C, A-D, B-C, B-D, E1-E2
∞
There are still four steps to this cycle. Twice
• To drive a stepper motor, you need to excite the coils in a particular as much current is drawn in this sequence,
sequence. there are two sequences that will work. You can use either and about 1.4 times more torque than in
drive sequence, but find the most reliable one for the application. sequence 1.

unipolar stepper motor

coil configurations E1 E2
 Stepper Motor Control cntd.. Batteries
• Half stepping • Important parameters to look for:
– Pack / cell voltage
– Capacity
– Discharge rate
– Weight
– Charging time
– Charging equipment and characteristics

Battery types
• Lead-Acid (normal and sealed)

• Nickel Cadmium

• Nickel-metal-hydride

• Lithium-ion