Research And Development On A Robotic System For Inspecting Transmission Line

The safety of power lines is very important in the power industry. It is fundamental to ensurethe normal operation of the entire power system. Because the lines are exposed in the air for long time,they are prone to be attacked by the following faults: ice-covering, cable internal damage, birddamage, corrosion, and oxidation etc. A new type of cable-inspection robot, which has small size,light weight, and easy to install, is developed in this paper. It can walk on the transmission line freely.When the robot travels on the transmission line, it can find the trouble spots and alarm to preventmore serious disaster.Firstly，the mechanical structure and control systems of the robot is designed. The workingconditions of the robot, the advantages and disadvantages of the existing cable inspection way areanalyzed. The functional modules of the robot are determined, including the robot body structuremodule, the movement control system module, the remote control system module, and the imageacquisition module. At last, the overall scheme of cable robot system, the digital modeling ofmechanical structure, and the selection of structure material are determined.After studying on the walking state of the inspection robot, the kinematic models of downhill anduphill motion simulation are established. And the condition of preventing the robot structure slidingaround the cable is analyzed. The condition of the robot uphill motion and the force of the spring arecalculated，and analyzes the center of gravity position of the robot. The stepper motor is selectedaccording to the torque. Using the dynamic simulation software ADAMS, the online conditions of thestable walking robots is verified.At last,give the improvement programs based on an analysis of theresults.The hardware and software of the control system are studied, by selecting of stepper motorsdrive, CMOS cameras, WiFi wireless transmission module, and other functional modules. Someperipheral circuits are designed and the corresponding auxiliary module programs are written basedon STM32F103controller.This inspection robot can run smoothly on the transmission lines, the image of cable health canbe captured and transmitted to the equipment on the ground. It provides an effective tool of healthchecking the transmission lines.