DYNAMIXEL Motor - AX-12A

For advanced robotics projects, a simple hobby servo motor won't have the repeatability and control you need. When a better class of servo motor is required, folks have always turned to DYNAMIXEL motors!

The DYNAMIXEL is a smart actuator system developed to be the exclusive connecting joints on a robot or mechanical structure. DYNAMIXELS’ are designed to be modular and daisy chained on any robot or mechanical design for powerful and flexible robotic movements. The DYNAMIXEL is a high performance actuator with a fully integrated DC (Direct Current) Motor + Reduction Gearhead + Controller + Driver + Network, all in one servo module actuator. Programmable and networkable, actuator status can be read and monitored through a data packet stream.

These motors can be sent advanced commands and then triggered at once. Torque and speed are programmable. Many projects that are a struggle to do with plain servos become trivial with the capabilities of a smart servo like this. Hardware serial is used to send and receive packets, and for Arduino there is a library with a large number of examples available from the maker. We also tried this simple library with one motor successfully.

Note that you cannot use 'pulse pin' type inputs to control these motors, they're more complex! These motors have a high voltage power pin (9 to 12V) and a half-duplex serial pin that can run at up to 1 Mbps. If you have one motor, you can simply wire it up to an arduino's hardware serial port transmit pin to transmit signals but not read them. For multiple motors you will need to use a Dynamixel shield or adapter that uses a direction pin so you can read data from the sensor.

You can easily create various types of robots such as humanoid, 4-legged and 6-legged robot with the AX-series. It can also be used as a wheel so that you can create a robot with a combination of wheel type and joint type in a single module.

By using a variety of high-strength engineering plastic option frames or by printing frames using a 3D printer, you can produce any type of robot at a comparatively low cost. Durability and quality is proven by world-class robot teams from over 30 countries.