We are using linear servos to actuate our hood, and it works very well, however, when we draw large amounts of current elsewhere on the robot, the servos become much more easily moved. What can we do to prevent this?
The cause is simple. When you draw a lot of current from the battery, the terminal voltage decreases, reducing the voltage available to the servo (as well as everything else). As the rules do not allow an alternate battery or buck/boost system for actuators, you only have a few options. Here are three that occur to me:
- Limit the current draw elsewhere. This will likely only be useful if you’re talking about issues during startup of those large motors.
- Use a servo that is geared slower (or more precisely for higher force) so that it is effective even when the voltage is reduced, or go to a motor/linear actuator based solution.
- switch to pneumatics (probably not useful if you need to stop at multiple points).
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How are you powering the servo? If directly from the roboRIO, that could make sense since I don’t know what the specs for the internal 6V rail are. But if you’re using a REV Servo Power Module it’s supposed to provide a constant 6V for any input 7-20V.
I think the max current you are supposed to draw is 2.2A, however that seems conservative as we have run powerful servos off the rail and stalled them with no issues on the rio side.
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