Energy Consumption of Geared DC Motors in Dynamic Applications: Comparing Modeling Approaches

In recent years, many works have appeared, which present novel mechanical designs, control strategies, or trajectory planning algorithms for improved energy efficiency. The actuator model is an essential part of these works, since the optimization of energy consumption strongly depends of the accuracy of this model. Nevertheless, various authors follow very different approaches, often neglecting speed-and load-dependent losses and inertias of components such as the motor and the gearbox. Furthermore, there is no consensus on how negative power affects power consumption. Some authors calculate energy consumption by integrating the electrical power entirely, by integrating its absolute value, or by integrating only positive power. This letter assesses how well commonly used models succeed in predicting the energy consumption of an 80 W geared DC motor performing a dynamic task, by comparing the results they produce to experimental baseline measurements.