The methodology of manual high-voltage transmission-line inspection is a time-consuming process, and also it involves high risk. The safe and efficient methodology of autonomous robotic inspection is needed to avoid these kinds of problems involved in the manual inspection. One of the challenging steps in the development of power transmission-line inspection robot is the design of a mechanism for crossing tension towers through the jumper cables and also avoiding obstacles in the transmission lines with minimum consumption of energy. Positioning of the robot in the transmission line and crossing the jumper cable are also difficult. This paper tries to find a feasible solution for these challenging issues. A novel design of the robot mechanism, positioning of dual arm for intelligent crossing and trajectory planning of arm based on minimum energy are presented. Optimum goal position for holding is determined using fuzzy logic. Ten degrees of freedom dual arm of the inspection robot is used for transferring a gripper hook to the goal position in the jumper cable through an optimum cubic trajectory for transferring whole robot from straight cable to jumper cable. Optimum energy trajectory is determined using primal dual interior-point method. This paper also presents the design of proportional-integral-derivative controller with genetic algorithm tuning for crossing from straight transmission line to jumper cable. Simulation study of robot motion through straight transmission line and jumper cable is also presented using ADAMS.
Ground-based high voltage electrical line inspection is one of the difficult and highly dangerous job as far as a manual worker is concerned. The transmission line inspection by robots avoids temporary interruption of power supply that affects the end user and transmission grid. Also, robot-based inspection reduces maintenance cost and hazards. The electrical line inspection is normally carried out using binoculars and rarely by helicopters in most of the countries because of the low cost. Wire traversing or aerial robots are being used in Japan, Canada, USA and Russia for inspecting and monitoring faults in transmission lines and towers. However, most of these robots require a lot of human effort for installation due to its weight and complex design. Cost of these robots is also very high. This paper presents the mechanical design, fabrication and testing of a novel, low cost, light weight and compact power transmission line inspection robot. This work also includes kinematic, static and dynamic analysis of various subsystems of robot. Proposed robot is capable of traversing on straight transmission line and jumper cables present in tension towers. The robot has 10 DoF dual arm for crossing operation and a base system to achieve the locomotion.
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