ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author discusses some of the most prominent and useful actuators these are motors. He needs an actuator to move it in a controlled way. Here actuator is the generic term for a device that controls external parameters. A typical microcontroller can provide rather limited currents on the order of a few mA. This is normally sufficient to control a single light-emitting diode, an LED, which typically draws less than 20 mA. Switching large currents and voltages requires us to "amplify" the small current that the microcontroller provides, and transistors of various flavors do just that. Motors in general translate chemical or electrical energy into mechanical energy, normally by rotating an axle in order to provide torque. They come in a wide variety of types and can be powered by both AC and DC voltages. A simple way to produce a constant voltage is to low-pass filter a pulse-width modulated output voltage.
