TECHNOLOGY n 21 www.drivesncontrols.com January 2025 A FINNISH COMPANY HAS come up with a modular kit of parts that it says can be used to power almost any form of electrically powered transport, from drones and motorbikes to buses and boats, rapidly and at low cost. It could even be used to build robots, or rover vehicles for planetary exploration. At the heart of Donut Lab’s scalable, modular platform is a doughnut-shaped electric motor that, it claims, performs better than other vehicle motors. The other key elements of the platform are fast-charging, highperformance batteries, an AI-powered controller, and smart software. The components are available in a variety of sizes and performance classes, and the modular architecture allows the components to be used together to build a variety of vehicles – or robots. Donut Lab says that its platform offers a “library” of compatible components that can be used to produce new vehicles rapidly. It promises that vehicles built on the platform will have significantly better performance, and be lighter and more affordable to manufacture. The components can also be used by themselves. Manufacturers can, for example, incorporate the motor into a vehicle built using traditional mechanisms. However, when the elements are combined, they are said to deliver “unprecedented” performance. The doughnut-shaped motors can be installed directly into vehicle wheels, eliminating the need for transmission components and making it simpler and more affordable to manufacture lighter vehicles. Donut Labs says that the direct-drive motors will offer “unmatched power and torque density”. They will reduce wear and extend lifespans. And, with few moving parts, they will need less maintenance. The motors can be controlled “at a millisecond frequencies”, allowing precision adjustments in real time, and delivering a level of responsiveness “far beyond what traditional systems can achieve”. Donut Lab is a subsidiary of an electric motorcycle pioneer, Verge Motorcycles. “Verge TS is the world's most advanced electric motorcycle,” says Donut Lab’s CEO, Marko Lehtimäki. “When developing it, we learned how difficult and slow it is to build electric vehicles using traditional mechanisms. The reason for this is that vehicles are built with components from different equipment manufacturers and are not designed to work together – integration work always takes up most of the time. We decided that if we were able to solve this, we would change the entire automotive industry.” The platform speeds up development cycles and can reduce the resource requirements for vehicle development by up to 95%, according to Donut. Work that used to take several years can be done in a matter of months, it adds. “We want to set a new standard for what electric transportation can achieve,” says Donut Lab’s product director, Ville Piippo. “The Donut platform creates entirely new opportunities for almost any industry. In the future, those utilising the platform will be able to select the components they want from a catalogue and connect them with standard connectors, after which everything is ready.” Donut Lab says that it has already attracted a lot of interest from vehicle manufacturers, and is collaborating with various companies to use its platform both to electrify existing vehicles and to produce completely new applications. For example, a Latvian company called Oruga is using the Donut Lab platform to power a futuristic vehicle that combines a snowmobile with a motorcycle, and is designed for use in challenging terrains such as sand, mud and snow. Another early adopter is an Australian company, Hyper Q Aerospace, which is using the Donut platform for a high-speed (more than 250 knots) electrically powered rotorcraft that could carry payloads of up to three tonnes. Hyper Q envisages stacking the motors to power its agile VTOL (vertical take-off and landing) craft, which would need no gearboxes. It believes that the pilotless aircraft will be able to fly almost twice as fast as a conventional, single-rotordisk helicopters or most multi-rotor designs. www.donutlab.com Doughnut-shaped motor can power everything from drones to robots Oruga is using the Donut Labs’ motors to power its all-terrain vehicles that combine the characteristics of a snowmobile and a motorcycle DANISH-BASED Mobile Industrial Robots (MiR) has announced a mobile cobot (collaborative robot) that can handle loads of up to 600kg. The MC600 integrates MiR’s MiR600 AMR (autonomous mobile robot) with a UR20/UR30 cobot from its sister company, Universal Robots, to automate tasks such as palletising, box handling and machine tending. The UR20’s extended reach allows the MC600 to tackle tasks in areas previously inaccessible to smaller cobots and to handle heavier loads than MiR’s smaller MC250 AMR. “By integrating the ‘legs’ of a mobile robot with the ‘arms’ of a cobot, the MC600 addresses multiple automation workflow challenges such as palletising and machine tending with one system,” says MiR president, Jean-Pierre Hathout. “While some companies have explored humanoid robots or one-off custom mobile cobot solutions for such tasks, they remain far from widespread industrial use. The MC600 is ready today to safely handle these complex automation challenges.” The global market for mobile cobots is expected to grow at an annual rate of around 46% in the period to 2030. The AMR can serve multiple machines and perform continuous material-handling tasks. By taking over the movement of heavy goods from humans, MiR says that it reduces physical strain on workers and enhances workplace safety. The MC600 is controlled by a unified software platform supplied by MiR partner, Enabled Robotics, which coordinates its mobile base and arm, simplifying integration into existing workflows. Mobile cobot with 600kg load capacity tackles tougher tasks
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