Chapter 8, Robot Drive Systems

Robot Actuators
Objectives
• To understand fundamentals of different
robot drives.
• To select and implement suitable drive for
robot application.
03/01/2024 Robotics, prepared by Prof. Dr. Eng. 1

Mahdi Alshamasin
Topics
• Introduction to robot drive

• Characteristics of robot drives
• Typical electric drives
• Microprocessor Control of Electric
Motors
03/01/2024 Robotics, prepared by Prof. Dr. 2

Eng. Mahdi Alshamasin
Introduction
• The robot's capacity to move its body,
arm, and wrist is provided by the drive
system used to power the robot.
• The actions of the individual joints must
be controlled in order for the manipulator
to perform a desired motion.
• The joints are moved by actuators
powered by a particular form of drive system.
Drive Systems
The drive system determined by
the speed of the arm movement,
the strength of the robot, dynamic
performance, and, to
some extent, the kinds of
application.

Types of Actuators
Common drive systems used in robotics are
electric drive, hydraulic drive, and pneumatic
drive.
• Electric Motors: DC motors or Servomotors,
Stepper motors, Direct-drive electric motors
• Pneumatic actuators
• Hydraulic actuators

Robot Actuators
 Have enough power to accel/decel the links
 Carry the loads
 Light
 Economical
 Accurate
 Responsive
 Reliable (the probability that they will work correctly for a given time under defined
working conditions)
 Easy to maintain

Characteristics of Actuating Systems
Weight, Power-to-weight Ratio

Operating Pressure
Stiffness vs. Compliance
Use of reduction gears

Power-to-weight Ratio
• PWR of Pneumatic systems is the lowest.
• PWR of hydraulic systems is the highest.
• PWR of electrical systems is average.
• Stepper motors have a lower PWR than
servomotors.
• The higher the voltage of an electric motor,
the higher PWR it has.
03/01/2024 Robotics, prepared by Prof. Dr. Eng. 8

Mahdi Alshamasin
Operating Pressure
•  Hydraulic system operating pressure
may range from 55 (3.79212bar)psi to
5000 psi(344.7379bar). Thus it delivers
very high power.
•  Pneumatic system normally operates
around 100 (6.89476bar)to 120
psi(8.27371bar).

Stiffness vs. Compliance
• Stiffness is the resistance of a material against
deformation (N/m).
• Hydraulic systems are very stiff and non-compliant.
• Pneumatic systems are compliant.
• Stiffness is directly related to the modulus of elasticity of
the material (E), E=σ/ε (stress/axial strain)
• The stiffer the system, the larger load that is needed to
deform it. The more compliant the system, the easier it
deforms under the load.
• Stiff systems have a more rapid response to changing
loads and pressures and are more accurate.

Use of Reduction Gears
Electric motors normally used in conjunction with reduction
gears to increase their torques and to decrease their
speed. This
 Increases the cost
 Increases the number of parts
 Increases backlash
 Increases inertia of rotating body
 Increases the resolution of the system.
Pneumatic & Hydraulic actuators can be
directly attached to the links.

Actuators Applications
•  Electric motors are the most commonly

used actuators.
•  Hydraulic actuators were very popular
for large robots.
•  Pneumatic actuators are used in on-off
type joints, as well as for insertion
purposes.

Advantages and Disadvantages of
Drive Systems

Hydraulic & Pneumatic Systems
• Hydraulic and pneumatic drive systems use
devices such as linear pistons and rotary vane
actuators to accomplish the motion of the joint.
• Pneumatic drive is typically reserved (‫ )معد‬for
smaller robots used in simple material transfer
applications.
• Both electric drive and hydraulic drive are used
on more sophisticated industrial robots.

Hydraulic actuators
• Good for large robots and heavy payload
• Highest power/weight ratio
• Stiff system, high accuracy, better
response
• Low compliance
• No reduction gear needed
• High torque, high pressure, large inertia on
the actuator
Hydraulic drives: electric pump connected to a reservoir tank
and a hydraulic actuator

Pneumatic Actuators
•  Good for on-off applications
•  Lowest power to weight ratio
•  Compliant system
•  Very low stiffness, inaccurate response
•  Difficult to control their linear position
•  Low pressure compared to hydraulics

Pneumatic drives: air-driven actuators

Electric Drives
• They are readily adaptable to computer
control, the predominant (‫ )غالب‬technology
used today for robot controllers.
• Electric drive robots are relatively
accurate compared to hydraulically
powered robots.

Electric Actuators
•  Good for all sizes of robots
•  Higher compliance than hydraulics
•  Needs reduction gears which reduce
inertia on the motor
•  Low stiffness
•  Better control, good for high precision
robots.

Electric drives: dc servomotors, stepper
motors; ac servomotors

The main requirements of industrial robot
joint drive motors
• For industrial robot joint drive motors, maximum power-to-mass ratio and torque-
to-inertia ratio, high starting torque, low inertia and a wide and smooth speed range
are required. Especially for robot end effectors (claws), motors with as small
volume and mass as possible should be used. Especially when fast response is
required, the servo motors must have high reliability and stability, and have a large
short-term overload ability. This is a prerequisite for the application of servo
motors in industrial robots .
1. Rapidity: The time for the motor from obtaining the command signal to completing
the working state required by the command should be short. The shorter the response
time to the command signal, the higher the sensitivity of the electric servo system and
the better the fast response performance. Generally, the electromechanical time
constant of the servo motor is used to illustrate the fast response performance of the
servo motor.

2. Large starting torque inertia ratio:
In the case of driving a load, the servo motor of the robot is required to have a large
starting torque and a small moment of inertia.
3. The continuity and linearity of the control characteristics. With the change of the
control signal, the speed of the motor can continuously change, and sometimes it is
necessary that the speed be proportional or approximately proportional to the control
signal.
4. Wide speed range: It can be used in the speed range of 1:1000 ～ 10000.
5. Small size, small mass, and short axial size.
6. It can withstand harsh operating conditions, can perform very frequent forward
and reverse, acceleration and deceleration operations, and can withstand overload in a
short time.

At present, AC and DC servo motors with high starting torque, large torque,
and low inertia are widely used in industrial robots. Generally, industrial
robots with loads below 1000N (equivalent to 100kgf) use electric servo drive
systems. The joint drive motors used are mainly AC servo motors, stepping
motors and DC servo motors. Among them, AC servo motors, DC servo
motors, and direct drive motors (DD) all adopt position closed-loop control,
and are generally used in high-precision and high-speed robot drive systems.
The stepping motor drive system is mostly suitable for small simple robot
open loop systems that do not require high accuracy and speed. AC servo
motors are widely used in flammable and explosive environments due to
electronic commutation and no commutation sparks. The power range of the
robot joint drive motor is generally 0.1-10kW

Microprocessor Control of Electric
Motors
• A microprocessor is a digital device that deals with
only digital inputs & digital outputs (0, 1).
• ADC & DAC are used to enable microprocessors
handle analog or continuous signals.
• The larger number of bits used, the better the
resolution becomes.
• It is necessary to have control over the voltage that
go to each motor and to be able to read the
feedback signals from each robot joint.
• Imagine how many input & output ports would be
necessary to have an accurate robot control.

PWM
• PWM is used for DC motor speed control with
microprocessors (microcontrollers).
• PWM is a technique of creating a variable output
(voltage) that requires only one output bit of
information.
• The voltage is turned on and off repeatedly so
that by varying the length of time that the voltage
is on or off, the average effective voltage will
vary . Vout = Vcc* ton/t

Pulse Width Modulation

PWM
Robot Arms

Direction Control of DC Motors
with an H-Bridge
•  In microprocessor control of DC motors
an H-Bridge circuit is used to change the
direction of current flow in a motor for
changing its direction of rotation.
•  This can be achieved with only two
output bits of the processor.

H-Bridges
 Forward mode, switches A and D closed.
 Reverse mode, switches B and C closed.

Control of DC Motors with an H-Bridge

L6203 – a full bridge driver
•  The L6203 is a full bridge driver, which can
handle the high peak current up to 5A and
supply voltage up to 48V.
•  The chip can run the motor at 4A continuous
with proper heat sinking.

DC Motor-Driver H-Bridge Circuit

TC4424 Driver
• Direct motor driving with this chip is only possible for motors that
draw less than 50 mA under load.
• TTL/CMOS compatible 4424 MOSFET driver chips protect the logic
chips, isolate electrical noise, and prevent potential short-circuits
inherently possible in a discrete H-bridge.
• Schottky diodes to protect against overvoltage or undervoltage from
the motor.
• Capacitors to reduce electrical noise and provide spike power to the
driver chips.
• Pull-up resistors that prevent unwanted motor movement while the
microcontroller powers up or powers down.

Stepper Motors
• A stepper motor is an electromechanical
device which converts electrical pulses
into discrete mechanical movements.
• The shaft or spindle of a stepper motor
rotates in discrete step increments when
electrical command pulses are applied to it
in the proper sequence.

• The motors rotation has several direct
relationships to applied input pulses.
• The sequence of the applied pulses is
directly
related to the direction of motor shafts rotation.
With the opposite sequence, the rotor will
rotate in the opposite direction.
• The speed of the motor shafts rotation is
directly related to the frequency of the input
pulses.
• The length of rotation is directly related to the
number of input pulses applied.
Stepper Motors Operation
• Stepper has multiple windings in its stator
and a permanent magnet as its rotor.
• When each of the coils of the stator is
energized, the rotor will rotate to align itself
with the stator magnetic field.
• Steppers rotate only when the magnetic field is
rotated through its different windings. Each
rotation is equal to the step angle.

Size
• In addition to being classified by their step angle stepper
motors are also classified according to frame sizes which
correspond to the diameter of the body of the motor. For
instance a size 11 stepper motor has a body diameter of
approximately 1.1 inches.
• The body length may however, vary from motor to motor
within the same frame size classification.
• As a general rule the available torque output from a
motor of a particular frame size will increase with
increased body length.

Power
• Power levels for IC-driven stepper motors
typically range from below a watt for very
small motors up to 10 –20 watts for larger
motors.
• The maximum power dissipation level or
thermal limits of the motor are seldom
clearly stated in the motor manufacturers
data.

Open Loop Operation
• One of the most significant advantages of a stepper
motor is its ability to be accurately controlled in an open
loop system – angular position is always known and no
feedback information is necessary.
• This type of control eliminates the need for expensive
sensing and feedback devices such as optical encoders.
• Stepper motor, unless a step is missed, steps a known
angle each time it is moved. Position is known simply by
keeping track (‫)تتبع‬of the input step pulses

When to Use a Stepper Motor?
• A stepper motor can be a good choice whenever
controlled movement is required - in applications
where you need to control rotation angle, speed,
position and synchronism.
• These include printers, plotters, hard disk drives,
medical equipment, fax machines, automotive,
robots and many more.

Stepper Motor Types
Stepper motors come in many different forms and principles
of operations. There are three basic stepper motor types:
Variable-reluctance, Permanent-magnet, Hybrid.

• The two most commonly used types of stepper motors
are the permanent magnet and the hybrid types.
• If a designer is not sure which type will best fit his
applications requirements he should first evaluate the
PM type as it is normally several times less expensive.
• If not then the hybrid motor may be the right choice.
• The hybrid stepper motor is more expensive than the PM
stepper motor but provides better performance with
respect to step resolution, torque and speed.
• Typical step angles for the HB stepper motor range from
3.6° to 0.9° (100 –400 steps per revolution).

Variable reluctance stepping motor
If step motor has three windings, typically
connected as shown in the schematic
diagram, with one terminal
common to all windings, it is most likely a
variable reluctance stepping motor.
In use, the common wire typically goes to the positive supply and the
windings are energized in sequence. The cross section is of 30 degree
per step variable reluctance motor. The rotor in this motor has 4 teeth
and the stator has 6 poles, with each winding wrapped around two opposite
poles. With winding number 1 energized, the rotor teeth marked X are
attracted to this winding's poles. If the current through winding 1 is turned off
and winding 2 is turned on, the rotor will rotate 30 degrees clockwise so that
the poles marked Y line up with the poles marked 2.

Unipolar stepping motors
• Unipolar stepping motors,
both Permanent magnet
and hybrid stepping motors
with 5 or 6 wires are usually
wired as shown in the
schematic diagram, with a
center tap on each of two windings.
• In use, the center taps of the windings are typically wired
to the positive supply, and the two ends of each winding
are alternately grounded to reverse the direction of the
field provided by that winding.

Bipolar permanent magnet and hybrid motors
• Bipolar permanent magnet and

hybrid motors are constructed with exactly
the same mechanism as is used
on unipolar motors, but the two
windings are wired more simply,
with no center taps.
• Thus, the motor itself is simpler but the drive circuitry needed to
reverse the polarity of each pair of motor poles is more complex.
• This schematic shows how such a motor is wired, while the motor
cross section shown here is exactly the same as the cross section
for the unipolar motor.

Stepping Modes
• The most common drive modes are:
Wave Drive (1 phase on), Full Step Drive (2 phases on), Half Step
Drive (1 & 2 phases on) and Microstepping (Continuously varying
motor currents).
In Wave Drive only one winding is energized at any given time. The
stator is energized according to the sequence
and the rotor steps from position

For unipolar and bipolar wound motors with the same winding
parameters this excitation mode would result in the same
mechanical position. The disadvantage of this drive mode is that in
the unipolar wound motor you are only using 25% and in the bipolar
motor only 50% of the total motor winding at any given time. This
means that you are not getting the maximum torque output from the
motor
Stepping Modes
Magnetic flux path bipolar

through Unipolar wound wound
a two-pole stepper stepper motor stepper
motor with a lag motor
between the rotor
and stator.

In Full Step Drive you are energizing two phases at any given
time. The stator is energized according to the sequence

Full step mode results in the same angular movement as 1
phase on drive but the mechanical position is offset by one half
of a full step. The torque output of the unipolar wound motor is
lower than the bipolar motor (for motors with the same winding
parameters) since the unipolar motor uses only 50% of the
available winding while the bipolar motor uses the entire
winding

Half Step Drive combines both wave and full step (1&2
phases on) drive modes. Every second step only one phase
is energized and during the other steps one phase on each
stator. The stator is energized according to the sequence
This results in angular movements that are half of those in

1- or 2-phases-on drive modes. Half stepping can reduce a
phenomena referred to as resonance which can be
experienced in 1- or 2- phases-on drive modes.
The excitation sequences for the above drive modes are
summarized in Table

• In Microstepping Drive the currents in the
windings are continuously varying to be
able to break up one full step into many
smaller discrete steps.

Characteristics of a Stepper Motor
The Torque pulse rate Characteristics of
a Stepper Motor gives the variation of an
electromagnetic torque as a function of
stepping rate in pulse per second (PPS).
There are two characteristic curves 1 and 2
shown in the figure below. Curve one is
denoted by a blue colour line is known as
the Pull-in torque. It shows the maximum
stepping rate for the various values of the
load torque at which the motor can start,
synchronise, stop or reverse. Similarly, the
curve 2 represented by Red colour line is
known as pullout torque characteristics. It
shows the maximum stepping rate of the
motor where it can run for the various
values of load torque. But it cannot start,
stop or reverse at this rate.

Characteristics of a Stepper Motor
Let us understand this with the help of an example, considering the above
curve.
The motor can start, synchronise and stop or reverse for the load torque
ƮL1 if the pulse rate is less than S1. The stepping rate can be increased for
the same load as the rotor started the rotation and synchronised. Now, for
the load ƮL1,after starting and synchronising, the stepping rate can be
increased up to S2without losing the synchronism.
If the stepping rate is increased beyond S2, the motor will lose synchronism.
Thus, the area between curves 1 and 2 represents the various torque
values, the range of stepping rate, which the motors follow without losing
the synchronism when it has already been started and synchronised. This is
known as Slew Range ( ‫)مدى العمل‬. The motor is said to operate in slewing
mode.

Torque -Speed Characteristics
• The torque vs speed characteristics are the
key to selecting the right motor and drive method
for a specific application. These characteristics
are dependent upon the motor, excitation mode
and type of driver or drive method.
The torque produced by a stepper motor depends on
several factors.
• The step rate
• The drive current in the windings
• The drive design or type

• Steppers develop maximum torque (holding) at zero
angular velocity.
• As the speed of motor increases, the torque it develops
reduces significantly.
• Steppers cannot rotate fast. If the signals coming are too
fast, the rotor will miss steps.
• Holding torque – The maximum torque produced by the
motor at standstill.
• Pull-In Curve - The pull-in curve defines an area referred
to as the start stop region. This is the maximum
frequency at which the motor can start/stop
instantaneously, with a load applied, without loss of
synchronism.

• Maximum Start Rate – The maximum starting step
frequency with no load applied.
• Pull-Out Curve - The pull-out curve defines an area
referred to as the slew region. It defines the maximum
frequency at which the motor can operate without losing
synchronism. Since this region is outside the pull-in area
the motor must ramped (accelerated or decelerated) into
this region.
• Maximum Slew Rate (‫)معدل االنحراف االقصى‬- The maximum
operating frequency of the motor with no load applied.

• The pull-in characteristics vary also depending
on the load - the larger the load inertia the
smaller the pull-in area.
• The step rate affects the torque output capability
of stepper motor - the decreasing torque output
as the speed increases is caused by the fact
that at high speeds the inductance of the motor
is the dominant (‫ )مهيمن‬circuit element.

L297 / L298 Stepper Motor Driver

• This Step motor controller uses the L297 and
L298N driver combination; it can be used as
stand alone or controlled by microcontroller.
• It is designed to accept step pulses at up to
25,000 per second.
• All eight inputs are pulled up to +5V by RP1
(4.7K).
• The output driver is capable of driving up to 2
Amp into each phase of a two-phase bipolar
step motor.

L293 Dual Stepper Motor Driver

L293 Dual Stepper Motor Driver
The circuit consists of three ICs, a IC16F84 and either two
L293D H-bridge drivers for bipolar steppers (or two
ULN2803 for unipolar steppers).
• A 4 MHz resonator, a 10K pull-up resistor, and some
connectors.
• A pack of 6 x 1.2V batteries, supplying 7.2V, is linearly
regulated to 5V to supply the logic voltage and the raw
unregulated power is applied to the 5V steppers.


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Robot Actuators

03/01/2024 Robotics, prepared by Prof. Dr. Eng. 1

• Introduction to robot drive

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Weight, Power-to-weight Ratio

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•  Electric motors are the most commonly

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• Bipolar permanent magnet and

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and the rotor steps from position

Magnetic flux path bipolar

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and the rotor steps from position

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and the rotor steps from position

This results in angular movements that are half of those in

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