Sensors & Hardware
How Actuators Work — BLDC, Stepper, Servo Motors
We compare the actuators that serve as a robot's "muscles" across three angles — the BLDC motor, the stepper motor, and the servo motor. These three aren't actually a parallel classification; motor construction (BLDC/stepper) and control architecture (servo) are two different axes that get conflated. Untangling that confusion, we trace the real torque/response/control tradeoffs from NASA's brush-wear-in-vacuum problem to the birth of Wiener's cybernetics.