Development of a Mobile Inspection Robot for Power Transmission Lines

The authors have been studying a mobile robot for inspection of the high voltage power transmission lines stretched between towers. The robot can run on a ground wire stretched on the top of the towers and go over the towers. In this paper, we propose a unique locomotive mechanism for the robot equipped with four crawlers, two arms with pulleys, and four actuators. It can go over the towers with stable state, and does not damage the towers and equipments on them. Geometrical conditions for the design of the mechanism and its details are described. A half scale model of the mechanism is constructed. It is confirmed by experiments that the mechanism can successfully go over the tower automatically with keeping static stability.