Will motors cause more noise when connected to a ground plane instead of directly to batteries?

Question

I am making a small robot using an Arduino and two servo motors. There are two ways that I can provide power to the motors:

1) Run power and GND wires from the battery holder to the motors, then connect the GND pin on the Arduino to the GND wire going to the servos, like this:

2) Run a power wire from the battery holder to the servos, then connect the GND pin on the Arduino to the servos (no GND wire going directly from the batteries to the servos):

One of the concerns I had about 2) is that the motors can draw several amps when stalled, so I wasn't sure if that would be too much current for the GND trace on the Arduino to handle. However, after looking at the PCB layout for the Arduino I see that there is a GND plane instead of a trace, so I assume the amount of current flowing through it is a non-issue?

My second concern is noise. I know that motors generate a lot of noise and so my main question here is whether not having a wire from the batteries to the servos (instead routing the current through the GND plane on the Arduino) will create a lot of noise that could cause problems for the microcontroller and ICs on the Arduino?

Answer 1

There is little choice about this. Quite simply, the power wires to the motor connect directly to the motor and the supply wires to the arduino tee off from the battery and do not go via the motor: -

The reasoning you have given is correct too. Noise can still be a problem to a ground plane so why inflict this unnecessary burden on the power plane of the Arduino or any other MCU that might be controlling a motor.

If it were a dc motor with the control transistor (say NPN grounding transistor) on an MCU board, the rest of the electronics on the MCU board would tee-off their ground from the emitter of the transistor i.e. no motor current through any unnecessary circuitry/ground-plane.