Design and Characteristics Analysis of Double Air-gap Vernier Motor with High Torque for Robot Gripper

• Main Authors: Woo, Hwajin, Kang, Dohyun, Oh, Youngjin, Park, Gwan-Soo
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Subjects: Air gaps; Density measurement; double air-gap; gripper motor; high power density motor; high torque motor; Permanent magnet motors; Permanent magnets; Power system measurements; Simulation; Torque; vernier motor
• ISSN: 2642-5513
• DOI: 10.1109/ICEMS59686.2023.10344663

In this paper, a vernier motor with a double gap has been studied to be applied to a robot gripper used in a manufacturing process such as a smart factory. It was designed and manufactured as a gripper motor capable of gripping a 10 kg object with a torque output of 4 Nm as a research objective. The double air gap vernier motor of this study, with structural design features such as flux modulation pole type slots and vertically arranged 28 pole permanent magnets, has the characteristics of high power density that generates high torque at low speed. The double-gap vernier motor has a torque characteristic that is 3 to 4 times higher than that of existing surface-mounted permanent magnet motors of the same volume. This has the advantage that the weight can be reduced by 3 to 4 times compared to other motors with the same performance. In addition, since it can produce high torque at low speed, it does not need to use a reducer, which is a great advantage when applied to a robot gripper as a lightweight motor. In this paper, the characteristics analysis and design verification of the above 4Nm torque motor was performed using the finite element method. It was designed with a 15% margin, considering variables such as the threading process and material properties.