Chapter 5. Working with Robotic Actuators and Wheel Encoders
In this chapter, we will cover:
- Interfacing a DC Geared motor with Tiva C LaunchPad
- Interfacing a quadrature encoder with Tiva C LaunchPad
- Explanation of interfacing code
- Interfacing Dynamixel actuators
In the previous chapter, we have discussed the selection of hardware components needed to build our robot. One of the important components in robot hardware is the actuator. Actuators provide mobility to the robot. In this chapter, we are concentrating on the different types of actuators that we are going to use in this robot and how they can be interfaced with Tiva C LaunchPad, which is a 32-bit ARM micro controller board from Texas Instrument that works at 80 MHz. The first actuator that we are going to discuss is a DC geared motor with an encoder. A DC geared motor works using direct current, and has gear reduction to reduce the shaft speed and increase the torque of the final shaft. These kind of motors are very economic...
