Description of a New Servo Motor Optimized for Educational Robotic Applications

In this paper it is described a new Servo Motor Optimised for Educational Robotic Applications (SMORA), which comprises several sensors and higher level addressing/communication capabilities. Even though servos have excellent qualities when used in the field of robotics, several properties can still be enhanced. These devices are known to have nonlinear properties and dynamic factors such as dead-zones, backlash and friction that might hinder their precision and accuracy. They usually do not provide position, velocity or current feedback to the device controlling them. Factors such as change in the load attached to the system increase the complexity of the analysis even further. Controlling these servos using a PWM signal might also become complicated if the number of servo motors to control increases. The new proposed servo consists of custom hardware and firmware that includes a microcontroller and a series of sensors, allowing for the motor current, temperature and voltage to be measured in real-time as well as precise position feedback thanks to the integrated hall-effect magnetic position encoder. It also incorporates an accelerometer and a gyroscope to measure the servo body relative position and rotation.