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.
Highlights
In recent years it has become a necessity to perform inspection work without suspending electric power supply
A mobile robot for visual inspection of power transmission lines with ability to pass the towers, [Adinan et al, 2004], is the other related project which has been done in this field
Obstacle avoidance, and data acquisition, the data which are gathered from the line as well as the data from various parts of the robot are transferred to the control board as necessary inputs to make decisions according to control strategy or these data are transferred to PC as inspection data
Summary
In recent years it has become a necessity to perform inspection work without suspending electric power supply. In 1991, by Sawada and his group, development of a mobile robot for inspection of a guard cable through eddy current was reported This robot presented a mechanism for tower transposition [Sawada et al, 1991]. Other related work can be found in [Wolff et al, 2001] that the main concept of the proposed design in this paper is from this work and used with permission from the authors Another project has been recently done by Li and his group. A mobile robot for visual inspection of power transmission lines with ability to pass the towers, [Adinan et al, 2004], is the other related project which has been done in this field. The authors of this paper have endeavored to develop a mobile robot for negotiating suspended lines over power transmission towers. International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems, Vol 5, No 2 (2008) ISSN 1729-8806, pp. 209-214
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