Development of a robot mechanism for traversing electrical transmission lines on tension and suspension towers

Abstract

Power transmission lines are prone to problems such as corona effect, cement growth, newlinecorrosion and should also withstand adverse weather conditions prevailing in various newlinegeographical locations. Therefore, periodic inspection of electrical transmission lines has newlinebecome inevitable. In a few countries, the inspection of these electrical lines is normally newlinecarried out using binoculars. In various countries including India, workers climb the poles newlineto manually check for faults in high voltage electrical lines which is riskier. Therefore, newlinethe use of robots for the inspection of transmission lines will be a risk-free method. newlineFurther, the use of robots also avoids temporary interruption of power supply that affects newlinethe end user and the transmission grid. It also reduces maintenance cost. Wire traversing newlineor aerial robots being used in Japan, Canada, USA and Russia are not only costly but also newlinerequire a lot of human effort for installation due to its weight and complex design. One newlineof the challenging steps in the development of electrical power transmission line newlineinspection robot is the design of a mechanism for crossing tension towers through the newlinejumper cables and to avoid obstacles in the transmission lines with minimum energy newlineconsumption. Further, the positioning of the robot in the transmission lines and the newlinecrossing of the jumper cable are also difficult. This research work tries to find a feasible newlinesolution for the aforementioned challenges. newlineThe development of a novel, low-cost, light-weight and compact suspended type power newlinetransmission line robot mechanism is presented in this thesis. The robot consists of three newlinesubsystems namely mobile base, pulley mechanism and 10 degrees of freedom (DoF) newlinedual arm. Mobile base helps the robot to traverse on the transmission line. Pulley newlinemechanism and 10 DoF dual arm are the sub-systems which help in crossing the obstacles newlineand towers. The research work is split into three phases. In the first phase of the work, a newlinenovel design of the robot mechanism is proposed. newline