Power transmission line inspection robots: A review, trends and challenges for future research

To efficiently transmit electric power to consumers, the power lines need to be inspected routinely for early fault detection. Thus, power line inspection robots are designed to replace the tedious and dangerous manual inspection using linemen or helicopters. However, most of the existing inspection robots are heavy, which make them slow and prone to external wind disturbance. This paper developed a lightweight dual-arm robot and investigates its robustness to wind disturbance on a lab-scale power line structure. The dynamic equations of the robot are derived using the Lagrangian equation for appropriate motor selection. Also, the components of the robot are designed to ensure low drag coefficient to wind flow, and the mechanism of the wind force on the robot-line coupled system is presented. To study the real-time impact of the wind, a wind speed of 4.5 m/s representing one of the windiest cities in China is considered as a case study. The experimental results for different wind directions, namely, 0°, 45°, and 90°, show that the maximum vibration is 8% higher than the normal vibration of the system in a controlled environment without wind. The results demonstrate that there is little influence of the wind on the system; hence, the robot has been successfully designed and can be applied for power line inspection.

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Investigation of Aerodynamic Stability of a Lightweight Dual-Arm Power Transmission Line Inspection Robot under the Influence of Wind

This paper aims at the problems of slow speed for the existing high-voltage line inspection robot moving over obstacles, and designs an inspection and foreign bodies removing robot walking on twin bundle conductors, which can move over the spacers and counterweights directly and fast. In this paper, the motion simulation shows that a robot using four symmetrical driving wheels can not move over the spacer, thus the asymmetrical driving wheel is designed. And through the prototype experiment, it proved that the robot with four asymmetrical driving wheels can directly and fast move over spacers and counterweights. This not only provides a feasible and efficient solution for transmission line inspection robot moving over obstacles, but also has certain engineering value for the development of transmission line inspection robot.

Design and Implementation of High-Voltage Transmission Line Inspection and Foreign Bodies Removing Robot

Regarding the typical operation tasks in high-voltage transmission line environment, in order to effectively eliminate or reduce the disadvantageous effects on the robot operation reliability cause...

Research on dual-arm coordination motion control strategy for power cable mobile robot:

Abstract. To address the problems of existing power line inspection
robots (PLIRs), such as complex structural design, difficult landing on and off lines, short cruise times, and easy hitting lines, we propose a novel flying–walking power line inspection robot (FPLIR) with the ability to fly and walk. The structural design of an FPLIR is carried out, which mainly includes a flying mechanism and a walking mechanism. Compared with climbing
PLIRs and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), the FPLIR can quickly land on and off lines, easily cross obstacles, and have longer cruise times and steady inspection perspectives. In addition, a directing-push pressing component is designed to improve the
walking stability along the line. We also investigate the walking stability of the FPLIR on the line when encountering working conditions with crossing
wind. The dynamics model of the FPLIR on the power line using the Lagrangian
equation is derived to analyze walking stability caused by wind loads,
considering pressing force and walking speed. An optimized regression design
with three factors (wind angle, walking speed, and pressing force) and five levels was adopted to reveal the effect of these factors on the walking stability of the FPLIR. The experimental results show that wind angle and
pressing force significantly influence the walking stability of the FPLIR
(P<0.05). The maximum swing displacement of the center of mass (COM) is 4.7 cm
(when wind angle, walking speed, and pressing force are 90∘, 7.2 m min−1, and 0, respectively). The maximum swing displacement of the
COM is 2.5 cm when the pressing force increasing to 39.4 N is reduced by 46.2 % (when wind angle and walking speed are 90∘ and 5.1 m min−1, respectively), which effectively reduces the influence of wind loads and improves the stability of the FPLIR. The proposed FPLIR
significantly improves inspection stability, providing a theoretical basis
for slipping control, collecting images of intelligence inspection robots in
the future.


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A novel flying–walking power line inspection robot and stability analysis hanging on the line under wind loads

Several studies have aimed to develop robotic systems which move in transmission lines. Until this moment, all of them have a high weight and cost associated with the equipment and reduced battery autonomy time. In this context, this paper aims to propose the POLIBOT (POwer Lines Inspection roBOT) with low cost and weight, enabling the movement over the lines and an easier installation and remove.,The designed robot uses the Profiles Manufacturing Methodology (PMM). The construction of the robot mechanical structure uses modularized aluminum parts built through square profiles. Thus, it’s possible a drastic reduction in production time as well as cost reduction and weight when comparing this method with other manufacturing processes like foundry, for example. For hardware and software systems, the use of free and open source software causes a significant reduction in cost and project execution time. The benefits of using open source systems are immeasurable, both from academic and industrial applications.,The POLIBOT platform is one solution to the problem of inspection in power lines. With this robot, more lines are maintained with lower time. In its constructive aspect, the robotic mechanism is designed using principles of bioengineering. The use of this principle was successful, considering that obstacle transposition is performed with stability and low energy consumption.,The suggestion for future researches is to replace the battery for solar energy and construction in polymeric material to avoid high magnetic fields.,The commercial application is evident because manual inspections are inefficient, very expensive and dangerous. Thus, it is growing the number of researches that develop mechatronics systems for this kind of inspection.,The impact is the reduction of accidents because the present procedure requires precision of movements, where the pilot and electrical technician are close to high electrical and magnetic fields. In addition, for some tasks, the worker has to walk on the line to reach some important points. Thus, those tasks involve high risk of death.,The PMM methodology represents an innovation to the state of the art because others robotic mechanisms proposed for inspection tasks present total structure mass between 50 and 100 kg and POLIBOT has only 9 kg. Other fact is its price for implementation as this robot used the robot operating system (ROS) framework, what dispense the use of licenses. Other important features are that the robot performs the tasks autonomously, which reduces errors introduced by the operator and its low manufacturing cost as compared with other projects.

Miguel Augusto de Miranda Mourão

Papers

POLIBOT – POwer Lines Inspection RoBOT