30-05-2012, 01:30 PM
MOTOR DRIVER SECTION
MOTOR DRIVER SECTION.doc (Size: 76 KB / Downloads: 33)
Microcontroller receives the code for left, right, up, down of robot from PC at port 1. It checks the code and according to that provides the data to motor on port o. We have used 4 DC motors of 30rpm to move the robot & two 10 rpm motor to move the camera in 2 axis.
To run the motor we have used L298 motor driver IC. Two motors on the left side of robot are connected in parallel combination & other two in right side are connected in parallel combination.
IC L298
The L298 Motor Driver has 4 inputs to control the motion of the motors and two enable inputs which are used for switching the motors on and off. To control the speed of the motors a PWM waveform with variable duty cycle is applied to the enable pins. Rapidly switching the voltage between Vs and GND gives an effective voltage between Vs and GND whose value depends on the duty cycle of PWM.
Operation of DC motor:
In any electric motor, operation is based on simple electromagnetism. A current-carrying conductor generates a magnetic field; when this is then placed in an external magnetic field, it will experience a force proportional to the current in the conductor, and to the strength of the external magnetic field. As you are well aware of from playing with magnets as a kid, opposite (North and South) polarities attract, while like polarities (North and North, South and South) repel. The internal configuration of a DC motor is designed to harness the magnetic interaction between a current-carrying conductor and an external magnetic field to generate rotational motion.
In real life, though, DC motors will always have more than two poles (three is a very common number). In particular, this avoids "dead spots" in the commutator. You can imagine how with our example two-pole motor, if the rotor is exactly at the middle of its rotation (perfectly aligned with the field magnets); it will get "stuck" there. Meanwhile, with a two-pole motor, there is a moment where the commutator shorts out the power supply (i.e., both brushes touch both commutator contacts simultaneously). This would be bad for the power supply, waste energy, and damage motor components as well. Yet another disadvantage of such a simple motor is that it would exhibit a high amount of torque "ripple" (the amount of torque it could produce is cyclic with the position of the rotor).