Boards Motor Voltage Output

The PicoBorg Reverse uses a technique called Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) to vary the output power.

In simple terms PWM works by turning the output on and off at a fast rate, simulating a reduced voltage.
The amount of time the output is on determines how much power is provided by the board.

For example with a power setting of 0.3 and 10 rechargeable AA batteries (1.2 V) we would get:
voltage input = 10 * 1.2 = 12 V
voltage output = power level * voltage input = 0.3 * 12 V = 3.6 V

Assuming you are using rechargeable AAs then a power level of 0.5 will give 6 V
If you are using normal AAs they provide 1.5 V so a power level of 0.4 will give 6 V
As long as you do not go above this power level 6 V motors will work perfectly fine.

As it happens our own DiddyBorg robot uses 10 AA batteries, also the motors are 6 V.
If you take a look at our DiddyBorg example scripts you can see how we have used the rules above to limit the output to the motors to be within the 6 V limit (calculated as maxPower).

If you want a better explanation of PWM and motors check out this video: Circuit Skills: PWM.
For a detailed explanation see the Pulse Width Modulation Wikipedia page.