stepping motors - FAULHABER - DC Motors & Micro Drive Systems
vehicles that are extremely manoeuvrable and capable of dealing with difficult terrain. Just a few examples: investigations of mining accidents, searches in inaccessible construction sites, mine
detection or even – stepping motors stepping motors - FAULHABER - DC Motors & Micro Drive Systems far surpassing all
of these demands – the exploration of other planets. All of these Jones on Stepping Motors applications call for a high degree of reliability,
redundancy and autonomy – all features of the new "Shrimp" vehicle concept. Of course, there are plenty stepping motors of
concepts and designs for 'all-terrain' vehicles. Look a bit closer
at all the design options, however, and
it soon becomes apparent that they are all based on just a few practicable solutions. First, there are the tracked, or 'crawler' vehicles,
which rely on a simple but well-established technology. Then stepping motors there are the so-called 'walking' machines, which have been improved by modern control technology to achieve better results. Last but not least, the most widely used solution, the wheeled vehicles. stepping motors Each of these solutions has its advantages and disadvantages.
Take tracked vehicles as an example: they are easy to steer, they stepping motors operate well on difficult terrain and can be turned in a very confined space – but they require a comparatively high drive power. They are also relatively heavy and there stepping motors is a large amount of wear on the chassis. To operate at all, travelling machines require complex, active positional control and, for the foreseeable future at least, are bound to be quite slow. In fact, they are hardly much faster on level surfaces than on rough terrain. Wheeled vehicles are also easy to steer and manoeuvrable. Moreover, they are light and therefore require little drive power. On rough terrain, they are capable of surmounting larger obstacles, but can also drive at a higher speed on a flat surface.
It was for these reasons that the ASL (Autonomous Systems Lab) of the École Poly-technique Fédérale de Lousanne (EPFL) decided in favour of the wheeled option for its new vehicle concept. Previous solutions in this field had the drawback of being designed for use on either rough terrain or level surfaces. The difference with the new 'Shrimp Rover' is that it is a universal vehicle designed for both applications.
FAULHABER standard motors with an
integral encoder supply the drive power
The concept
The vehicle is essentially based on an all-wheel drive concept. This is the only way of consistently ensuring an optimum drive power to the wheels with best-possible traction. A positive "side-effect" of a single-wheel drive system is the redundancy of the drive motors.
Sophisticated chassis kinematics were developed to optimise the contact between the ground and all of the wheels. An all-terrain concept is based primarily on ground clearance – after all, why "climb" over something if you can "roll" over it. This is why two different wheel suspension systems have been provided on the vehicle body.
A special parallel architecture has been used for the side wheels. This keeps the virtual centre of rotation of the four-wheeled intermediate chassis at an optimum point between the wheel axles. The chassis itself,
stepping motors dc motors micro drive system micro drive integrated encoder micromotor gearmotor faulhaber motors brushless motors motion control
