Motors

Motors are actuator devices, actually some of them are and those can also be very different, beginning with operating principles and ending with power and size. In robotics mainly electric motors are used. Electrical motor is a device which converts electrical energy to mechanical energy (work). It works on principles of electromagnetism.

There are several ways to classify electrical motors. Most important is to divide them as alternate current (AC) and direct current (DC) motors. In addition, there are electrical motors with brushes and brush-less motors, linear motors and rotary motors, nano-motors and large motors and so on. On the other hand, some of the segmentations are provisional. For example, linear motion is achieved usually using rotary electrical motor, which is integrated into unitary body with screw mechanism and treated so as linear actuator. In this chapter are covered three most common types of electrical motors in robotics: DC motor with permanent magnets, RC servos and stepper-motor.