Development of the fully-automatic live-line maintenance robot-Phase III

Live-line maintenance of high-voltage overhead electrical lines is extremely difficult but of utmost importance particularly for the rapidly changing society caused by the development of information technology. The robot is indispensable for this job with high safety and efficiency. The paper offers first the background of the system development of Phase I and Phase II that are already put into operation for executing standard jobs automatically and non-standard jobs manually. It continues to describe the third generation robot system (fully automatic live-line maintenance robot-Phase III) that is at the research and development stage. In particular, Phase III explains the concept that improves robot intelligence using vision sensor and compliance control.