Direct drive system for an industrial robot using a brushless DC motor

Although conventional commutator-brush DC servomotors and gearing systems have found wide application in drives for small- and medium-sized industrial robots, they have a number of limitations. The work described has involved the development of a brushless DC motor direct-drive system for a high-positional-accuracy robot, which overcomes these limitations and improves performance. Typical experimental results on a test rig are presented and discussed.