Electric motor breaking

You could apply just enough power to your motors to counteract gravity and hold them stationary. You'd need a way to sense wheel rotation, but you might already have that if you have motor shaft encoders installed.

Cheers,

-Brian

That would waste an awful lot of energy, and maybe even damage the motors, if you stopped for a while. My suggestion? Two words: worm gears.

Tom

if it is a rather light-weight robot, one solution may be to glue (or screw into a mounting hole) a plastic or wood post by the post coming out of the motor. then you could attatch a sort of triangle that is rounded on one side to the post.

with this in place, the motor should be able to turn only one direction. might pose a problem backing up though :).

just a thought

why dont you use stepper motors then naturally break due to the way they work

I would try to short-circuit the motoros' wireings: any movement of the shaft would generate a current that would in turn generate a magnetic field in the motor trying to compensate for the movement. At least in theory. Worth a try...

Andras Tantos

Yes, I have used the 'short circuit' technique before and it works. Most full-bridge drivers have the ability to act as a break by shorting the motor. The only problem is that ultimately there are some losses in the system and so the EMF generated by the motor isn't enough to overcome a large force, but you should be ok on a slope. Regards,

Geoffrey.

Yup,

Just implement a servo loop.

Mike

My main problem with the active breaking systems people are suggesting (which all sound like good ideas) is that this is a solar powered unit. As such I don't really have a lot of spare power and when I am stopped I would rather be using the juice to recharge my storage cells then using it running the motors.

David

Didn't see what other people are suggesting, but are worm drive motors an option?