Accuracy enhancement of the spherical actuator with a two-level geometric calibration method

 This paper presents a two-level geometric calibration method for the permanent magnet (PM) spherical actuator to improve its motion control accuracy. The proposed actuator is composed of a stator with circumferential coils and a rotor with multiple PM poles. Due to the assembly and fabrication errors, the real geometric parameters of the actuator will deviate from their design values. Hence, the identification of such errors is critical for the motion control tasks. A two-level geometric calibration approach is proposed to identify such errors. In the first level, the calibration model is formulated based on the differential form of the kinematic equation, which is to identify the geometric errors in the spherical joint. In the second level, the calibration model is formulated based on the differential form of torque formula, which is to calibrate the geometric parameters of the magnetization axes of PM poles and coils axes. To demonstrate the robustness and availability of the calibration algorithm, simulations are conducted. The results have shown that the proposed two-level calibration method can effectively compensate the geometric parameter errors and improve the positioning accuracy of the spherical actuator.