Mechanical Implementation and Simulation of MoboLab, A Mobile Robot for Inspection of Power Transmission Lines

Abstract

This paper describes the first phase in development of a mobile robot that can navigate aerial power transmission lines completely unattended by human operator. Its ultimate purpose is to automate inspection of power transmission lines and their equipments. The authors have developed a scaled functional model of such a mobile robot with a preliminary simple computer based on-off controller. MoboLab (Mobile Laboratory) navigates a power transmission line between two strain towers. It can maneuver over obstructions created by line equipments such as insulators, warning spheres, dampers, and spacer dampers. It can also easily negotiate the towers by its three flexible arms. MoboLab has an internal main screw which enables the robot to move itself or its two front and rear arms independently through changing gripped points. When the front arm gets close to an obstacle, the arm detaches from the line and goes down, the robot moves forward, the arm passes the obstacle and grippes the line again. In a same way another arms pass the obstacle.

Cable-Climbing Robots for Power Transmission Lines Inspection

“…Considering different distances between two consecutive obstacles and different tower sizes in mechanism design, the proposed robot can pass all types of the obstacles on straight lines autonomously. Similar crawling mechanism also proposed by (Wolff et al, 2001), and modified by (Nayyerloo et al, 2007). In the latter, a mechanical mechanism, as shown in Figure 15, was proposed.…”

“…15. Proposed mechanism by Nayyerloo et al, 1) the gripping mechanism, 2) the driving system, 3) one of the three arm mechanisms, and 4) the arm driving mechanism (Nayyerloo et al, 2007) When the robot detects an obstruction, the gripper of the closest arm to the obstacle opens, and the arm goes down to avoid contact. The next step is translating the arms forward by fixing the middle arm to the line and driving the robot's main screw to pass the front arm to the other side of the obstacle.…”

“…16. Obstacle traversing mechanism proposed in (Wolff et al, 2001) and (Nayyerloo et al, 2007) The proposed mechanism is simple to control, fast, and stable in overcoming obstacles. Even in windy climates, the three flexible arms can lift the robot body and make it as close as possible to the line to avoid swinging with large amplitudes.…”

Development of a practical power transmission line inspection robot based on a novel line walking mechanism

“…Expand right prismatic joint and contract left prismatic joint to adjust the central of gravities of the two legs from the right leg to the left leg and make sure the left leg is vertical, at the same time, three joints: R-yaw joint ,L-yaw joint and hip joint should rotate at the same time to keep the orientations and position of the two foot fixed. 5. The robot is now again in the beginning of single-supported phase.…”

“…The principal reason for articulations to enable the robot to accommodate and overcome most obstacles by permitting the correspond wheel to rise up when it collides with the obstacle. Tribrachiation mobile robots were presented in [5,6,7], the multi-degree-of-freedom structure allows a minimum of two traction wheels to be secured to the cable. Technically, more than two legs provide redundant support and often increase the load capacity and safety.…”