Servo Motor Applications in Robotics Solar Tracking System etc

Servo motor mechanism is used in a large number of applications which are critical in position control. We cannot use DC motor to control a tail of aircraft because controlling a DC motor for accurate positioning is not only difficult but almost impossible.

Servo Motor in Robotics

One of the most popular servo motor applications is robotic. Consider a simple pick and place robot. Pick and place robot is such a robotic machine which is used to pick an object from one position and place the object at different position. Now, in order to pick an object from position A and place it in position B the motors which are used to actuate the joints are servo motors. This is because; we have to plan the angular movement of each and every joint to complete this task of pick and place. Once this data is fed to the robot controller, the robot will continuously do its job. The controller will send PWM data to the individual motors of the robot. This gives precise angular control of the arm which is not possible with a regular DC motor.

Servo Motor in Conveyors

Conveyors are used in Industrial manufacturing and assembling units to pass an object from one assembly station to another. Let’s consider an example of bottle filling process, in the process the bottle needs to be filled with the liquid and moved to the next stage which is mainly the packaging stage. So in order to achieve this conveyor belts are used with servo motors so that the bottle moves precisely to the desired location and stops so that the liquid can be poured into it and then it is guided to the next stage. This process continues until stopped. Hence the precise position control ability of the servo shaft comes in handy.

Servo Motor Applications AS Camera Auto Focus

Today’s modern digital cameras are very advanced. One of the advanced features is its ability to auto focus on the object to be captured. When the image of the object is created within the digital signal processor of the camera, it is checked for sharpness. Basically, if the focal length (measured from camera lens) is not proper, the image appears to be blurred. The corrective action to position the lens precisely so that the sharpest image is captured is done using a highly precise servo motor fitted within the camera. This is another important example of servo motor applications.