Chapter 3

Design
 Contents
• Actuators,
• Internal state sensors,
• External state sensors,
• End effectors,
• Mechanical arrangement and specification:
PUMA 500 series
 Actuators and sensors
• Actuators in robotic systems are used to move
the joints
• Joint actuators can be
– Hydraulic actuators
– Pneumatic actuators
– Electric actuators
 Hydraulic actuators
• Are actuators which use oil pressure
• Can produce large force/torque to drive
manipulator joints without used of reduction
gearing – large power-to-weight ration
• Are easily applied for position control
• Their disadvantage is
– Are cumbersome and messy
– Require a great deal of equipments such as pumps,
actuators, hoses, and servo valves
 Hydraulic actuators
• linear movement
• big forces without gears
• actuators are simple
• in mobile machines
• Bad efficiency
• motor, pump, actuator combination is lighter
than motor, generator, battery, motor & gear
combination

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Hydraulic actuators
 Hydraulic actuators
• Disadvantage
– friction of seals, leakage, viscosity of oil, and
complex temperature dependent of the oil – not
suitable for accurate position/torque control
– Not clean
 Pneumatic actuators
• Are actuators which are based on pressure
• Air or other fluid is used
• Are relatively cleaner
• Share all disadvantage of hydraulic actuators
 Electric motors
• Most popular choice
• Easy to control and are clean
• Used for small to medium sized robotic
manipulators
• Need reduction gears of high ratio
– Linearizes the dynamics
– Increases the friction, elasticity and backlash
Types of electric motors used in robotic
manipulators
• AC motor
• DC motor
• Stepper motor
• Other devices such as solenoid
 DC motor

• simple, cheap
• easy to control
• 1W - 1kW
• can be overloaded
• brushes wear
• limited overloading
on high speeds

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 DC-motor control
• Controller + H-bridge
• PWM-control
• Speed control by
controlling motor
current=torque
• Efficient small
components
• PID control
H-bridge
H-bridge operation
 H-Bridge
• Hardware Implementation with
Microcontroller:
• 2 Digital output pins from microcontroller,
[one at Gnd, one at Vcc] feed into a power
amplifier

• Alternative: use only 1 digital output pin plus

one inverter, then feed into a power amplifier
 Brushless DC-Motors
(pm synchronous motor)

• no brushes  no wearing parts  high speeds

• coils on cover => better cooling
• excellent power/weight ratio
• simple
• needs both speed and angle feedback
• more complicated controller
• From small to medium power (10W – 50kW)

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 Asynchronous Motors
• very simple, very popular in industry
• 0,5kW - 500kW
• More difficult to control (frequency)
• nowadays as accurate control as DC-motors
• In mobile machines also (5kW )

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 Synchronous Motors
• usually big 100 kW - XXMW
• also small ones ~ brushless DC-motors from
50W to 100 kW
• controlled like as-motors (frequency)
• ships
• industry
• Mobile machines

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 Reluctance (Stepper) Motors
• angle control
• slow
• usually no feedback used
• accurate positioning
• with out feedback not servos
• easy to control

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 Stepper Motors
• Stepper motors are another kind of motors that do not require feedback

• A stepper motor can be incrementally driven, one step at a time, forward or

backward

• Stepper motor characteristics are:

– Number of steps per revolution (e.g. 200 steps per revolution = 1.8° per
step)
– Max. number of steps per second (“stepping rate” = max speed)

• Driving a stepper motor requires a 4 step switching sequence for full-step

mode

• Stepper motors can also be driven in 8 step switching sequence for half-step
mode (higher resolution)

• Step sequence can be very fast, the the resulting motion appears to be very
smooth
Operation principle of stepper motor

• Diagram of a 30 degree/step stepper motor

• Energizing sequence -
– A-B-C-A Anti-clockwise rotation
– A-C-B-A clockwise rotation
 Connecting stepper motor winding to a
microcontroller or microprocessor
• Circuit diagram of a uni-polar driving
 Other Actuators
• piezoelectric
• magnetic
• ultra sound
• SMA
• inertial

Jussi Suomela HUT/Automation 23

 Sensors and detectors
• Sensors are used to supply information to the
robotic control system
• Sensors
– Provide information about the status of links and
joints
– Provide information about the environment
 Status sensors
• Is primary use of sensors
• They are basic elements in the internal closed loop
control of the robot
• Sense
– Position
– Velocity
– Acceleration
– Torque/force in joints
• Degree of resolution and accuracy of status sensors
determine the accuracy of the robot
 Environmental sensors
• Provide information about the objects in the
surrounding
– Detect presence of work piece
– Determine position and orientation of work piece
– Provide information about environmental
variables such as temperature, humidity
• Information is used by the control computer
to adapt trajectory
 Types of status sensors
• The most common types of status sensors are
– Potentiometers
– Tachometers
– Optical encoders
– Micro switch
 Environmental sensor types
• Contact type sensors
– Pressure
– Force
– Slip
– Torque
• Non contact type sensors
– Vision
– Optical, acoustic
– IR and proximity switches
– temperature and chemical sensors
 Position sensors
• Potentiometers
– Are variable resistance devices
– Change in length(linear or angular) varies the effective
length of the conductor and hence resistance of the
device
• optical encoder
– Converts motion into a sequence of digital pulses
– By counting a single bit or decoding a set of bits, the
pulses can be converted to absolute or relative
position
• Optical encoder
 Position sensors
• Absolute
– A single bit corresponds to a unique position
– Have a number of tracks
– The number of tracks determine the bit width and hence
the resolution
– Example: 8 track encoder, degree to be sensed is 360/256
• Incremental encoder
– Produce digital pulses as the shaft rotates
– Has two tracks in opposite directions
– The phase sequence between the channels determine
the direction of rotation
• Absolute encoder
• Decoding the output of an incremental
encoder
 Velocity sensors
• Tacho generators
– Produce a voltage proportional to speed of
rotation of a shaft
– Used with dc motors to sense speed of rotation
– Have very big voltage outputs
– Used for feedback control of DC motors
 Acceleration sensors
• Accelerometer
– measure acceleration
– Use force sensor and mass and then apply
Newton’s second law
– Not common in robotics because of noise effect
 Proximity sensors
• Are very common and useful in robotics and
automated machinery applications
– Inductive proximity sensors
• Induce magnetic field or eddy current into the target
• Sense the presence of ferric magnetic material
– Capacitive proximity sensors
• Sense presence of any material
– Photo electric proximity sensors
• Used in grippers to sense obstacles
 Photo-reflector sensors
• Used for grippers in pick and place task

• When object is not reached, both sensors give high

output
• When object is at center of the two, both have low
output
• If one is high and other is low, object is not placed
correctly
 Stress sensors
• Semiconductor strain gages
– Are piezoelectric materials such as crystalline
quartz
– When material is stressed a change in the
electronic charge across the faces of the crystal
occurs
– The change in the charge is sensed using various
circuits, Example- bridge circuit