PF8-4
Torque Calculation Method of Spherical Robotic Wrist Motor
Sung Hong Won and Ju Lee, Senior member IEEE
Department of Electrical Engineering, Hanyang University
Haengdang-Dong, Seongdong-gu, Seoul, South Korea
sagewide@ihanyang.ac.kr
Abstract— This paper presents the torque calculation method
of a new spherical robotic wrist motor capable of three degrees of
freedom (DOF) motion in a single joint. The spherical motor
bases its operation principle on permanent magnet BLDC motor.
Prediction of the spherical motor characteristics requires the
computation of the exact motor dynamics at each position and
angle using 3D finite element analysis which imposes a
computational burden. By only calculating Lorentz forces of the
coil area mesh elements, this computational burden can be
reduced.
I. INTRODUCTION
In recent years, the study need of robotics has grown
rapidly in the various fields of industry. Especially,
remarkable growth of the human-like robots which are
characterized as bi-ped robot has attracted the interest of many
research groups. However, the joint driving motor system
which is one of the key technologies of these robots has not
get a new angle on its structure in many cases yet.
In some of previous studies on new structures of driving
motors, the spherical motor has very impressive features like a
capability of three DOF motion in a single joint [1]. These
spherical motors are very difficult to calculate torques at
arbitrary rotating axis because they have sophisticated features.
So, researchers who study on the spherical motors use 3D
finite element method to predict the characteristics of the
spherical motors which imposes a computational burden.
This paper proposes a novel calculation method of the
spherical motor torques at any arbitrary axis with a given
magnetic flux density field data by 3D finite element analysis
and current values of each coil elements [2].
II. TORQUE CALCULATION OF SPHERICAL WRIST MOTOR
Fig 1. shows the spherical robotic wrist motor structure.
Fig. 1 Spherical robotic wrist motor structure
The basic concept of this type spherical motor base on
BLDC motors. Actually, the spherical motor of fig 1. is
comprising of two stators on upside and down side and one
rotor including magnet of BLDC motors. Because the
spherical motor stator has no salient pole, the forces on the
rotor surfaces can be calculated by Lorentz forces in coil
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elements of the stator. Fig 2. shows the meshed coil elements
used for calculating the forces. We only need these meshed
coil elements and the flux density field data in area where the
coils are placed. The flux density field data excited by the
rotor permanent magnet can be calculated by just one static
3D finite element analysis. In these case, the magnetic loading
is dominant compared with the electric loading, the flux field
excited by the coil current can be ignored.
Fig. 2. Meshed Coil elements
Due to the randomness of the rotor rotating direction, we
can not fix up a specific rotating axis for the torque
calculation. This makes the torque calculation much more
difficult. Thus, we calculate three torques of the rotor at the
three basic rotating axes: x-axis, y-axis, z-axis. By vector
summing of these torques, we can predict the rotation
direction eventually.
III. CONCLUSIONS
The Concept design of the spherical robotic wrist motor
has been developed. For prediction of this motor driving
characteristics, a novel torque calculating method is proposed.
Using this method, we can calculate the spherical robotic wrist
motor torques at any rotating axis and this method saves
calculation time dramatically because it needs just one static
3D finite element analysis for getting flux density field data.
Detail calculation process and characteristics prediction
results will be described in full paper.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This work was financially supported in part by KEMC
through the Energy Technology R&D program.
REFERENCES
[1] Lee K. M., Vachtsevanos. G, Kwan. C, “Development of a spherical
stepper wrist motor”, Robotics and Automation, 1988. Proceedings.,
1988 IEEE International Conference on ,24-29 April 1988 Page(s):267 -
272, vol.1.
[2] S.H.Won, J.S.Ahn, J.Lee, “Dynamic Characteristics Analysis of LDM
for the Electric Screen Door System” , J. Appl. Phys. , Apr. 2006, to be
published.
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