Honeywell discusses their disruptive new spherical motor

We conversed with Pablo Bandera, Honeywell’s Staff Engineer & Senior Manager about their new spherical motor.

• Pablo, can you explain the origin to develop this new motor? What problem was it going to solve?

The spherical motor was originally designed to be a miniature pointing mechanism for a small sensor or camera – basically a novel idea for a very compact 2-axis gimbal. However, as we explored things further we realized that this integrated 2-axis motion, depending on how it’s configured, can address a wide range of applications. The same fundamental design can, in fact, look very different. For example, a miniature camera gimbal, a control moment gyroscope, and a robotic joint all look very different from each other but are all enabled by the same set of motions provided by the spherical motor. In many cases, it allows you to re-engineer a system in ways that are simply not feasible or practical with multiple interconnected motors.