Dual arm electrical transmission line robot: motion through straight and jumper cable

Abstract

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.

Keywords

• High voltage transmission line robot
• tension tower
• dual arm robot
• kinematic modelling
• robot fabrication
• experimentation