Development of A Robot System Performing Maintenance Tasks on High-Voltage Power Transmission Lines

Performing maintenance tasks on high-voltage Power Transmission Lines (PTLs) at high altitude is dangerous and tedious, hence demands robots to take place of human being. In this paper, a robot system is developed to fulfill three of typical maintenance tasks. These tasks are adjusting vibration dampers, cleaning the current deflectors and assembling cotter pin. In general, different tasks require different end-effectors, and work at height demands the system simple and light-weighted. To this end, three special end-effectors are designed by modular method so that they can be connected to a manipulator and changed for the corresponding tasks, similar to a CNC machining center. The whole robotic system consists of three end-effector modules, a tool exchange device, a light-weight 5-DoF modular manipulator, and a desk-top level modular master robot for remote control of the manipulator. The architecture and integration of the system are presented in detail, while experiments are carried out to verify the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed setup. It is shown that such a system will bring new robotic applications in the working at height of power industry.