Development of a power line inspection robot with hybrid operation modes

Abstract

In this paper, we design and build a power line inspection robot capable of hybrid operation modes. Specifically, the developed robot is able to land on the overhead ground wire (OGW) and to move as the climbing robot. When to negotiate obstacles, it can vertically take off the wire and fly over the obstacles as the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). A customized trumpet-shaped undercarriage is used to guarantee that the robot can land and move safely. With the aid of a swingable 2D Laser Range Finder (LRF), the robot can not only determine whether there are obstacles but also detect the position and orientation of the OGW, making it suitable for automatic inspection of power lines. The outdoor experimental results <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">1</sup> demonstrate the effectiveness of the robot in landing and obstacle negotiation. In addition, the average power consumption of the robot is much lower than that of traditional flying robots for power line inspection.