Structure And Motion Control Investigation Of Inspection Robot For Cable Trench

Power underground cables will replace the overhead cables gradually, and become dominant in the urban distribution network, which have many advantages, for example. They affected little by the weather and external environment, can improve the power factor of the system, can be maintained easily, and are conducive to urban planning and environmental protection. With the continuous expansion of the grid size, the frequency of the cable fault is increasing, resulting in huge economic losses. While something goes wrong with the high-voltage cable, distribution network in these cities will be affected seriously, so are the industry and everyday life. Therefore, there need a regular inspection for the cable trench which is underground in a long-term. The main fault of the cable trench are fire and gas explosion, and it is very important to develop an inspection robot for cable trench which can detect the cable and gas for the cable trench.According to the environment of the cable trench, this paper analyzes the functional requirements and designs the general scheme for the inspection robot for cable trench, analyzes the kinematics and dynamics for the key components and designs the robot in detail, builds and tests a prototype, and improves the unreasonable design. The main contents of this paper includes:1) The general scheme for the robot is designed. It is identified that the robot has a walking mechanism which has a good performance, equipped with high-resolution camera, lamp and a variety of sensors. The camera has multiple degrees of freedom and the brightness of the lamp can be adjusted. Walking mechanism, head lifting mechanism, PTZ camera, power supply system, lighting system, sensors and water resistant are designed in detail.2) The kinematics and dynamics of the walking mechanism and the head lifting mechanism are analyzed. The requirements of the robot’s overall size, steering performance and obstacle performance are concluded. Mechanical calculation is carried out, according to the result, and appropriate powertrain is chosen for the robot.3) The control system of the robot is designed, and path adjustment of the robot during working is analyzed. According to the steering performance of the robot, an adjustment scheme is concluded which is simple and feasible. As a result, the deviated robot can adjust itself and back to the predetermined path quickly.4) After the prototype experiment, the structure of the walking mechanism’s supporting wheels and the head lifting mechanism are improved: a spring which is used to reduce the impact force of the robot is added in the original construction of the supporting wheels; a torsion spring which is used to reduce the powertrain that the head lifting mechanism needs is added in the head lifting mechanism. The improved robot can meet the design requirements.