Servo Motors for Robot Head Rotation

June 28, 2021

Servo Motors for Robot Head Rotation

The drive system for robot head rotation makes the robot head move more intelligently, such as nodding, shaking the head, bending the head, looking down and looking up, etc. Thus, the robot’s behavior and communication with people are more natural, contributing to an interactive experience.

 

Drive Demand for Robot Head Rotation

With the development of AI, while enjoying the convenience given by robots, there are also some problems. The robot head structure lacks the function of looking down/up and rotating, and the expression is dull, giving a bad service experience. Taking educational robots as an example, the service robots on the market generally add a display screen to the robot’s head to display the robot’s eyes in an animated form to enrich the robot’s expression. Use the head rotation device to realize the horizontal rotation and shaking of the head, but most of these robots have poor flexibility in head rotation, and the control is complicated and the cost is high.

 

Simple Drive Systems for Robot Head Rotation

Simple devices of the robot head rotation, including the devices for head shaking and looking down/up. No matter which kind of action of the robot, it can be realized by the power transmitted through the rack and pinion. The robot head attached to the vertical bevel gear has two degrees of freedom: it rotates around the vertical axis (controlled by the right stepper motor) and rotates around the horizontal axis (controlled by two stepper motors). Their direction and speed must be the same. It is a spherical mechanism (the axes of all five rotating joints are parallel) and both motors are grounded.

 

Servo Motors for Robot Head Rotation

The intelligent rotation of the robot head can also be driven by the servo motor to achieve cw&ccw rotation. Servo motor here is also one kind of micro gear motor. The structure of the servo motor is relatively simple. In general, it consists of a small DC motor, a set of deceleration gears, a potentiometer (connected to the gear motor to function as a position sensor), and a control circuit board.

 

Great Heat Dissipation

The motor is needed to drive the rotation of the robot head. The drive motor generates a certain amount of heat during the driving process. If the heat cannot be dissipated in time, it will affect the operation of the circuit board inside the robot trunk and affect the robot service life. ZHAOWEI servo motor drive system can be adopted for intelligent robot head rotation. 2-stage, 3-stage and 4-stage are available for customization according to customer needs. The reduction ratio, input speed and torque can also be adjusted and therefore, the robot head can imitate humans to rotate the head and improve the service life of the robot.

 

Failure Tests of Servo Motors for Robot Head

The reliability and stability of the product is an important index to evaluate the technical level of the product. In order to accurately analyze, evaluate and verify the performance of the product, ZHAOWEI builds a variety of laboratories, which includes high/low temperature testing chamber, 3D vibration testing device, thermal shock testing chamber, rain and spray testing chamber, rain and spray testing chamber and so on.

 

Industry Trend

If the robot can realize some basic head and face movements, such as blinking, opening a mouth, nodding, shaking his head, etc., it will be easier to be more popular. Nowadays, the use of robot servo motor is becoming more and more extensive. The demand for service robot reducers mainly comes from two aspects including small robots (mainly entertainment and educational robots) and large robots (family assistants, collaborative robots). Small robots require gear motors with a smaller size, high reliability, clutch mechanism, high price/performance ratio, and corresponding small gear modulus. As for the gear motors for large service robots, gears and motors are designed as a whole with small backlash, high power density, long life, impact resistance, etc. ZHAOWEI firmly insists on helping robot manufacturers to complete the intelligent and technological robots by virtue of micro gear drive systems.