Working with Dynamixel actuators

Dynamixel is a kind of networked actuator for robots developed by Korean manufacture ROBOTIS. It is widely used by companies, universities, and hobbyists due to its versatile expansion capability, power feedback function, position, speed, internal temperature, input voltage, and so on.

The Dynamixel servos can be connected in a daisy chain; it is a method of connecting device in a serial fashion, that is, connecting one device to another through the connected devices, and can control all the connected servos from one controller. Dynamixel servos communicate via RS485 or TTL. The list of available Dynamixel servos is given at http://www.robotis.com/xe/dynamixel_en.

The interfacing of Dynamixel is very easy. Dynamixel comes with a controller called USB2Dyanmixel, which will convert USB to Dynamixel compatible TTL/RS485 levels. The following figure shows the interfacing diagram of Dynamixel:

ROBOTIS provides Dynamixel SDK for accessing motor registers; we can read...