1
Motor Designs for an Autonomous Lawnmower
Joshua Castle, Eric Ohata
Abstract—Current autonomous lawnmowers on the market
boast a reasonable torque output with a fairly long battery life,
but are very expensive and heavy. This paper compares two
motor designs that try to improve the quality of motors that
go into autonomous lawnmowers while maintaining a low cost.
Comparisons are made between a permanent magnet DC motor
and a DC motor with a novel flux barrier design.
Index Terms—flux barrier, FEMM (Finite Element Method
Magnetics), dc motor, variable reluctance
I. I NTRODUCTION
Autonomous robots are being used commonly in various
industries as a means to reduce the costs of simple tasks. For
years large industrial companies have used robots on assembly
lines to increase production and lower costs. More recently
this type of automation has been introduced at more consumer
levels with products such as the Roomba branded automated
vacuum cleaner. There have also been product introductions
of a similar product for outdoor use that mows a lawn rather
than cleaning a carpet. An example of such a device is shown
in the figure below. Currently, Cal Poly is using a similar
Fig. 1. Husqvarna Automower
device to mow the lawn between the Baker Science building
and Building 52.
Devices like these can use some of the same general design
principles as the indoor devices but their use case inherently
comes with increased physical demands. The outdoor devices
have to travel over larger distances and the torque and power
required to cut grass is more demanding than cleaning a
carpet. Some design considerations for this type of product
would include a motor that outputs maximum torque while
requiring a minimal current draw. This would allow the mower
to use less energy and operate over a greater range. Another
consideration is the necessity to reduce the size of the motor
used. A compact motor is needed to fit into the small chassis
of the device. The final design consideration is improving the
power to weight ratio. The goal of improving this ratio is to
improve the mower’s portability and battery life.
II. D ESIGN C RITERIA
In this report, we will propose two different motor designs
and analyze how they compare to several performance criteria
of a design for the use case of an outdoor autonomous motor.
Each of the motors will adhere to the following criteria:
TABLE I
TABLE OF D ESIGN C RITERIA
Diameter Max Current Magnet Type Wire Gauge
12 in 3.3 A N35 16 AWG
The maximum diameter was chosen from an average of
multiple autonomous lawnmowers. This way, the designs
can be comparable to what is currently on the market. The
maximum current draw comes from a comparison to current
mowers that use a 10A-h battery and have a run time of about
2 hours and 30 minutes. A current draw of 3.3A on a 10A-h
batter should give us a run time of 3 hours, which outperforms
current lawnmowers. N35 permanent magnets are being used
as they are the most widely available neodymium magnets.
The wire gauge was chosen to handle the 3.3A current draw
while still being small enough to wrap 500 turns around the
stator poles.
The motors will be designed and their performance tested
using the Finite Element Method Magnetics simulation soft-
ware and will not be physically built or tested. While the
adherence to these criteria may not yield a completely optimal
motor design the purpose of this paper is to compare the results
of two different types of designs and conclude which type of
motor is the superior design for this particular use case while
ensuring that the design itself is the sole limiting factor to
overall performance.
III. P ERMANENT M AGNET D ESIGN
A. Permanent Magnet Schematic
The first of the two designs is a simple symmetric permanent
magnet outrunner brushless motor. The motor has a 12in
diameter with six poles and 12 N35 magnets that run along the
outside of the structure cased in a non-magnetic titanium cas-
ing. Each N35 magnet is placed with the direction alternating
between pointing toward the center and away from the center
of the motor. Six magnets have directions toward the center
while the other six point 180 degrees away from the center.
The stator of this motor is composed of six electromagnetic

poles constructed of iron. The poles are organized into three
series circuits with each circuit paired with the pole located
180 degrees away. The space between the stator and rotor is
composed of air and the space at the center of the stator is
composed of a ring of titanium surrounding a center of air. A
complete diagram of the motor design is shown in the figure
below.
Fig. 2. Schematic of Motor With Permanent Magnets
B. Simulation Results
The main measurable metric in the comparison of the two
designs is the torque produced on the rotor. The magnets and
titanium casing make up the rotor region which was used
to calculate torque via weighted stress tensor in the FEMM
simulation. This region can be visually seen in the figure
below.
Fig. 3. Flux Density Plot of Permanent Magnet Motor
Although in this design the rotor would rotate while the
stator remains stationary, the stator elements were grouped and
rotated for better visualization and comparison between figures
of the competing design. These grouped elements were rotated
2
about the center by one degree at a time for a complete 30-
degree cycle. The resulting torques were plotted on the torque
vs rotor angle curve in the figure below.
Fig. 4. Plot of Torque vs. Rotor Angle
Through the data from analysis of the effect of output torque
based on the input angle, it was discovered that the maximum
torque occurs at about a 23 degree change in angle from
the original orientation while minimum torque occurs in the
original orientation of the motor with a zero degree rotation.
In figure x below, a density plot for the minimum torque of
-.09 N*m at a 0 degree change is shown.
Fig. 5. Flux Density Plot at Minimum Torque
Compare this to the orientation of the motor at maximum
torque, shown in the density plot below. Here, a maximum
torque of 183.53 N*m at a 23 degree change of rotation is
shown.
IV. H YBRID F LUX BARRIER D ESIGN
A. Motor Schematic
The flux barrier was considered as a candidate for improving
the motor of electric lawnmower because only the stater needs
to be energized, saving current draw and energy usage while
improving battery life.
Figure 7 shows the flux barrier motor with 6 poles on it’s
stator. This motor is 12in. in diameter and has N35 permanent
magnets placed in its rotor. Going around the rotor every 90
degrees, the fields of the permanent magnets alternate direction
 3

This means in order to produce any torque, the total

reluctance of the magnetic circuit must change as the rotor
moves.

B. Simulation Results
By using FEMM (Finite Element Method Magnetics), it
is possible to determine the torque produced by the motor.
As stated before, this is the main metric by which we are
comparing the two designs.

Fig. 6. Flux Density Plot at Maximum Torque

Fig. 8. Flux Density Plot of the Variable Reluctance Motor

Figure 8 shows the flux density plot of the motor running

with a current of 3.3A on the horizontal coils. In FEMM, it
is possible to change the angle of the rotor and calculate the
Fig. 7. Schematic of Motor With Permanent Magnet Flux Barrier
total torque.

from pointing into the center, to pointing away from the center.
The stator has 6 pole, each consisting of winding made from
16AWG wire wrapped with 500 turns.
The flux barrier works on the principle of reducing the total
amount of reluctance the magnetic fields see. Torque produced
by a variable reluctance motor can be calculated with [1]

1 2 dL
T = i (1)
2 dθ
where T is the torque produced, i is the current through the
windings, L is the inductance, and theta is the angle between
the stator and the rotor. Because reluctance R is
1 Fig. 9. Total Torque vs. Angle of Stator to Rotor
R= (2)
L
Figure 9 shows the total torque vs. stator angle. The
Substituting (2) into (1), we get
maximum torque achieved was 4.37898N*m. Compared to
1 2 d( R1 ) the permanent magnet motor, the torque curve shows a much
T = i (3) smoother rotation, but with a lot less torque.
2 dθ
 4

V. C ONCLUSION
The permanent magnet motor outperformed the hybrid flux
barrier. The maximum torque achieved by the permanent
magnet design was about 183.53N*m. This is more than
enough to create a functional lawnmower, which mean we
could lower the current and still achieve adequate performance.
The flux barrier design only produced a maximum of 4.38N*m
of torque. This is not enough to spin the blades of a mower
and would not be possible to implement in an actual product.
Although the flux barrier produced a smoother torque, an
autonomous lawnmower does not require the rotor to spin
smoothly. By our simulations, a permanent magnet brushless
DC motor is the optimal design for lawnmower applications.
The permanent magnet design proposed in this paper outper-
forms current motors on the market and can still be improved
with more simulation.

R EFERENCES
[1] L. Xu, T. A. Lipo and S. C. Rao, ”Analysis of a new variable-speed
singly salient reluctance motor utilizing only two transistor switches,”
in IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications, vol. 26, no. 2, pp. 229-
236, March-April 1990.