Pneumatic-Mechanical Systems in UAVs: Autonomous Power Line Sensor Unit Deployment

Abstract

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have introduced benefits in many areas of the energy sector. Today, power line sensor deployment is manually executed on passive power lines using helicopters, introducing great risks, costs and difficulties for the power distribution companies and the human operators.In this paper, we present a novel modular mechanical system utilizing pneumatic as the actuation source to deploy a sensor unit to a power line using a UAV, with aid of an autonomous alignment algorithm. The results show that the UAV can facilitate the sensor unit, and is capable of deploying it to the power line in an autonomous manner. The works leave opportunity for expanding to further applications in the future.

Design, Integration and Implementation of an Intelligent and Self-recharging Drone System for Autonomous Power line Inspection

“…To aid with navigation, a Dual-LiDAR solid-state navigation system implemented in the authors' previous work [16] [6] was utilized to align the drone heading and position with the power line cables. During the cable inspection phase, the drone uses the navigation system to align with the cable before traversing along it at a constant speed of 0.5 m/s.…”

“…Previous research from the authors [10][16] discuss different methods to achieve this, but with drawbacks such as slow closing time, low durability or low holding force. The drawbacks were all solved and verified in a pneumaticmechanical system in [6], which this section builds on top of. Fig.…”

“…The gripper fingers were designed to grasp a power line with a diameter of 25 mm. With an objective of an inter-locking finger design to relieve the gripper while perching, the design objectives determined in [6] for the finger design was implemented. 3D printing was previously the preferred manufacturing method, but the drawbacks include long manufacturing time and low strength.…”

“…1 SDU UAS Center, The Maersk Mc-Kinney Moller Institute, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark, niiv|obs|esme@sdu.dk 2 Fraunhofer IMS, 47057 Duisburg, Germany linda.cousin| gerd.vom.boegel@ims.fraunhofer.de 3 Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark, nomi@sdu.dk The authors' previous work [6], presents a novel system that utilizes the inductive harvesting principle to power sensor units that can be carried and deployed by a drone. Some research activities also aim to charge drone batteries [7][8] [9], it was observed that none of the developed systems were light enough to be carried by a drone (without demand for a much larger battery) and at the same time able to recharge a drone battery in a reasonable amount of time.…”

MPDrone: FPGA-based Platform for Intelligent Real-time Autonomous Drone Operations

“…Automation through drone technology is emerging. Nowadays, drones can be used to automate manual solutions or improve already automated ones and open up opportunities to solve problems in innovative ways [1], [2]. However, system efficiency, weight, and power consumption are some of the core challenges in equipping small and inexpensive drones with the right tools for success in their autonomous operations.…”