[ros-users] high power ROS/Arduino motor driver

[Chris Jones]

I've been working on a boxing robot for the last few years and in the
process we needed to come up with our own high amp motor driver setup and I
wanted to see if anyone would find it useful.

The basic setup is an Arduino 2560/Due compatible shield that has
connections for up to 6 motor drivers and 6 encoders.

The motor drivers will handle up to 40A of power and use standard PCI-E
power connectors so that it can be powered by a standard PC power supply.
There's no reason you couldn't connect a 12V battery to it but out
application didn't require it.

We're using the AS5040 magnetic encoders and for our application we're
mounting them to the back of a 12V wormgear motor to create a pseudo-servo
but with the low cost and power of a DC motor (200W in our application).

The motor driver/encoder connects to the Arduino shield via an RJ45
connection. This way you can easily make your own cables for your specific
application.

We're finishing up modules for Arduino and ROS so that it can be plugged in
to your application without much effort. We're pretty new to PID control so
if anyone is interested in the project and would like to help out with some
PID code send me a message.

My plan was to sell them to help pay for development of our main robot but
I may consider open-sourcing the entire design.


-- 
Chris Jones
Overthrow Robotics
chris.jones at overthrowrobotics.com
310-400-0256
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