Improvements of Performance of Multi-DOF Spherical Motor by Double Air-gap Feature

Abstract

As the need of electric motor is increased rapidly throughout our society, the various application fields are created and the service market called robot gets expanded as well as the existing industrial market. Out of those, the joint systems such as humanoid that is servo actuator for position control or all fields which require multi-degree of freedom (multi-DOF) require the development of innovative actuator. It is multi-DOF spherical motor that can replace the existing system in multi-DOF operating system. But, multi-DOF spherical motor that has been researched up to date is at the stage which is insufficient in performance or mechanical practicality yet. Thus, first of all the research results and limitation of the previously-researched guide frame-type spherical motors were analyzed and then the feature of double air-gap spherical motor which was devised to complement that was studied. The double air-gap multi-DOF spherical motor is very suitable spherical motor for system applying which requires the multi-DOF operation due to its simple structure that does not require other guide frame as well as performance improvement due to its special shape which has two air-gaps. So, the validity of the study was verified by designing and producing it with 3D-FEM through the exclusive jig for multi-DOF spherical motor.